Confirmation last week that US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would hold a summit in Alaska raised a red flag for Europe and Ukraine.
With no Ukrainian or European involvement, and the expiry of a US deadline to impose sanctions on Moscow coming to nothing, it looked like Russia was getting it all its own way.
Ukraine and Europe's chief concern for most of the past week has been that Mr Trump and Mr Putin could strike a deal in Alaska that would force Ukraine to cede about one-fifth of its territory to Russia - regions in eastern and southern Ukraine currently occupied by Russian forces.
There would be some "land swapping", Mr Trump told reporters at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC earlier this week.
It was beginning to sound like another Yalta, the conference held in Crimea in February 1945 between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin where the two Western allies gave in to the Soviet leader's demands to redraw the map of Eastern Europe and control it.
Of course, Russia’s leader wants more Ukrainian land than the 19% currently occupied by his forces.
He wants Ukraine to withdraw entirely from the four regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and to have Russia's annexation of those regions, along with Crimea, internationally recognised as the main price for stopping the war.
Official recognition of Russian control of any seized territory is unacceptable for Europe, and naturally for Ukraine.
Problematically for Europe, in April the Trump administration offered the Kremlin a very generous deal to stop the war that reportedly included official US recognition of Russia's control of Crimea and de facto recognition of Russian-occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine.
US recognition of Crimea still on table
Though Russia rejected the offer at the time, the US position had not changed. That would mean that official US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia is still on the table.
In the eyes of European governments, allowing Russia to change international borders through force would simply embolden Mr Putin to rearm and invade Ukraine again in the coming years, and next time take it all.
Or Russia could threaten the security of a NATO member state in Eastern Europe.
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Either scenario threatens the future of European security.
It explains why this week there was a flurry of diplomatic activity in European capitals to impress upon Mr Trump the need to distrust the Russian leader’s assurances.
On Tuesday, the leaders of all EU member states except Hungary endorsed a letter supporting Ukraine’s right to decide its own future and also that any diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine must protect the security interests of Ukrainians and Europeans - which brings Ukraine’s future security needs a step closer to Europe’s.
Then followed a meeting called by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz between Mr Trump, other European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump now reading territorial issue
European lobbying seems to have had an effect on how Mr Trump is now reading the territorial issue.
According to sources familiar with the meeting, the US president told the other leaders during Wednesday's call that he would not negotiate a division of Ukrainian territory. That assurance bodes well for Ukraine and Europe.
It was also reported by US media that Mr Trump told the other attendees that the US could play a role in offering a security guarantee to Ukraine, though no details have emerged of what level of engagement that might be.
If that is the case, then it would be the first time that Mr Trump has committed to protecting Ukraine’s post-war security alongside the Europeans.
There is also a strong possibility that during the Alaska meeting Mr Putin will bring up Russia's original list of demands given to the Biden administration in December 2021 just two months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Presented by Russian officials at the time as a formula for decreasing geopolitical tension in Europe, one of the demands required the West to give security guarantees to Russia. In reality, the demands looked like a Russian attempt to regain its former sphere of influence over all of Eastern Europe.
The most notable demand was for NATO to withdraw its troops and weapons from countries in Eastern Europe that joined the alliance from the late 1990s onwards.
Doing so would leave countries like Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia particularly exposed to the threat of Russian aggression.
For almost 80 years, the US has provided Europe (first Western Europe and then Eastern Europe from the late 1990s onwards) with a security guarantee, and American and European leaders have always worked in lockstep when it comes to the continent’s security.
Mr Trump is the first post-war US president to cast doubts about the future of that ironclad security guarantee, leading to commitments earlier this year from European governments to ramp up spending on their national defence budgets.
Another point of concern for Europe is that some kind of economic deal between the US and Russia could come from the Alaska meeting. This scenario would be to the detriment of US-Europe relations given that the Europe is already hitting Russia with heavy sanctions.
Back in March when the Trump-Putin relationship had briefly blossomed, the White House spoke about the "enormous economic deals" that could arise from better US-Russia relations.
At the same time, Mr Putin spoke about the possibility of energy sector cooperation.
Not surprisingly, the Kremlin returned to the theme of US-Russia economic cooperation this week.
Yesterday, a senior member of the Russian delegation was talking about the "huge untapped potential" of trade cooperation between the two countries. That kind of talk will make Europe feel nervous that Mr Trump could preference business over decades-old alliances.
Mr Putin is bringing both Russia’s finance minister and the head of Russia's direct investment fund as part of his delegation which indicates that Russia is going to lay out business opportunities for the US.
Mr Trump is a businessman and may be won over.
But just as Mr Trump is unpredictable, so too is the outcome of the meeting later today at the Elmendorf-Richardson Joint Base outside Anchorage.
European leaders, like the rest of us, will have to wait and see what Mr Trump and Mr Putin agree upon and what it will mean for Ukraine.
