Britain and France have committed to deploying troops to Ukraine as part of a potential peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow. Under the US-approved plans, British and French forces would, in the event of a ceasefire, set up “military hubs” across the country and oversee the construction of “protected facilities” to store weapons and military equipment. Russia has dispatched navy vessels to escort a reportedly empty oil tanker being pursued across the Atlantic by the US for breaking its naval blockade in Venezuela. The Marinera, which was believed to be heading towards Venezuela last month before dramatically changing course, changing its name and reflagging from a Guyanese to a Russian vessel, is being closely tracked by Nato allies as it travels north of the UK en route to Russia. A significant hoard of Iron Age objects likely used by Boudica’s tribe nearly 2,000 years ago has been discovered in west Norfolk. The Iceni items, uncovered during routine excavations for a new residential development, include a near-complete battle trumpet known as a carnyx and a bronze boar’s head that once formed part of a military standard.

Since kidnapping Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump has repeatedly affirmed his intention to annex Greenland, leaving the already fearful Danes “truly alarmed”, says Marc Champion in Bloomberg. “And so they should be.” For all Trump’s pretence that it’s about national security, what he’s really after in the semi-autonomous Danish territory – “as in Venezuela” – is access to natural resources. Greenland’s landmass, three times the size of Texas, is supposedly packed with untapped, “if hard to access”, rare earth metals, and there is oil and gas beneath its sea beds. Given Denmark’s economic and security postures are all built on the – now seemingly defunct – US-led world order, PM Mette Frederiksen faces the same problem that afflicts Europe at large: in Trump’s “might-makes-right” world, “they have few cards to play”.

Another reason Trump is fixated on Greenland is that it would be something of a “foreign balm for domestic pain”, says Edward Luce in the FT. His libertarian friends have been eyeing it for some time: Peter Thiel has invested in a start-up looking to found crypto-powered “network states” on Greenland’s undeveloped territory; Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, co-founded PayPal with Thiel and Elon Musk. And on top of pleasing those techy types, annexing the territory would also appease MAGA ideologues by effectively ending Nato. If Denmark invoked Article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all – no ally would come to its defence against America, voiding the treaty. Were Denmark to accept the fait accompli, the result would be the same. For Trump’s supporters back home, it’s becoming a top priority. And “unlike Mars, occupying Greenland is doable”.

❄️🛷 Greenland is a “starkly different” place to America, says Dennis Lehtonen in The Independent. Running water hardly exists outside large towns, with locals instead walking to nearby lakes to fill containers at “water houses”. There are often no nurses in settlements, only a designated person who, in an emergency, writes a description of the incident then contacts a faraway health centre that will send out a helicopter – “weather permitting”. In one remote settlement I worked in, the nearest shop was a 20km sledge-ride away.