Western countries and Kiev fear that Russian President Vladimir Putin - whose forces annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March - could send troops into the east to head off a humiliating rebel defeat.
He got up and limped over to the reception, in a new annex whose construction owed a lot to funds corralled by Joe Bruno.
But it seems just as likely (if not more) that it was a reference to Ukraine, whose Crimean Peninsula was annexed by Russia in 2014 and whose future was very much in the balance in 2016.
In the shadow of his trial, he joined the Movimento Unionista Italiano, a political party whose objective was to annex Italy to the United States.
In 2004 he founded the Green Beanery, the Annex café whose profits continue to fund the work of Probe International.
In 1995, it was included in Annex III ("species whose exploitation is regulated") of the Barcelona Convention Protocol on protected areas and biodiversity in the Mediterranean, which has not been ratified.
The colonists were unsympathetic to Carnarvon's plans, and the Transvaal Boers, whose lands had just been annexed by the British, were leaning toward independence rather than federation.
Coming just 24 hours after Trump backed the Russian president over his own intelligence services at a summit in the Finnish capital, Tusk pointedly highlighted the continued support of Japan and the EU for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, whose Crimean peninsula was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Failing to enlist British interests in the development of the Congo region, Stanley took service with the king of Belgium, Leopold II, whose secret ambition it was to annex the region for himself.
