IT was a moment of pure bathos. Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelenskyy standing in the heart of war-torn Kyiv holding ceramic cockerels. It wasn’t hard to read their minds. The Prime Minister imagining the likely Sun headline: "Wot a cock, Boris. We know you like jugs but really…"

President Zelenskyy was probably wondering what the Kremlin would make of the strangest photo opportunity of the Ukraine war. It was too ridiculous to have been staged – or if it was it was the most extraordinary exercise in post-modern propaganda. Vladimir Putin, for all his macho posturing, would have just looked ridiculous holding an ornamental cock.

The face of the young woman spoke volumes: look, I know this looks bizarre but I had to do something to show gratitude for the British Prime Minister’s act of solidarity. “I’m from London,” said Boris Johnson pointlessly. “ I know,” she replied. "I know. I'm from Kharkiv.” It was all that needed to be said.

Kharkiv has experience, in 2022; worse devastation than London suffered in the 1940 Blitz. The jugs she offered have become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance since one was found still intact after a Russian rocket attack on an an apartment block.

It is hard for us to grasp the respect which Mr Johnson commands in Ukraine. To us he is a beleaguered, shabby and unreliable politician. A law-breaker, even, who is now being fined for attending parties in Downing Street during the pandemic. But to survivors of Kharkiv he is the leader of one of the world’s great democracies, a country that is a founder member of both Nato and the UN Security Council. He dared to come and show his support in person. Damn right they respect him.

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“Ukraine will always be grateful to Boris,” said President Zelenskyy, who used Mr Johnson's visit to build the case for more and better arms for Ukraine. He knows that the images of the UK PM amidst the ruins will have shamed other European leaders, like Emanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz. They have been continuing to finance Vladimir Putin’s war machine to the tune of nearly €1 billion a day by continuing to purchase Russian oil and gas.

But Mr Johnson’s detractors have lost no time in trying to diminish the exercise as political vanity. How dare he strut on the world stage, say Labour, when he's failed to tell the truth about parties in No 10. He should resign for breaking the law. His tour of Kyiv was just a stunt to make him to look like the statesman he isn’t, a diversion from his local difficulties.

The military historian Max Hastings went further. In a Times article he accused Mr Johnson of promoting the “wild delusion” that Ukraine can inflict a “historic defeat” on Russia. The former editor of the Daily Telegraph said the PM's self-promotion amounted to “ jingoism”. Mr Johnson was irresponsibly pursuing the Brexiter fantasy of “Global Britain” .

Mr Johnson may well have been doing that, I don’t know. But I don’t think the Ukrainians care. They have judged Mr Johnson on his actions not his words. If he’d had the cojones to come to Kyiv, when air raid sirens were still sounding, they weren’t going to question his motives.

Nor would Mr Zelensky warm to Mr Hastings' insistence that the West needs to “cut a sordid bargain” with Russia to halt the bloodshed. “Serious soldiers,” Mr Hastings says, know that Ukraine cannot win this war. Putin needs to be given an “off ramp”, a sort of presentational victory. What he means is the dismembering and partition of Ukraine.

This is not unlike the argument made by Churchill’s opponents who called for a deal with Germany in 1939 because Britain could not win a war against the Wehrmacht. It is not a disreputable position to hold and I am not accusing Mr Hastings of appeasement. However, as one of the leading historians of the Second World War, it seems extraordinary that he doesn’t understand why the Ukrainians don’t seem mindedto accept that their cause is futile. Any off-ramp for Russia would involve the removal, probably by assassination, of President Zelenskyy himself, who is proving to be Ukraine's greatest military asset.

Mr Johnson has indeed made himself look good by conspicuously supporting the Ukrainian resistance. It has remade him as a serious politician and largely immunised him from the consequences of receiving yesterday's fixed penalty notice, which is not, of course, a criminal conviction.

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Mr Johnson knew instinctively that the British people would support Ukraine in face of Russian aggression. Even before the conflict began he authorised the supply of lethal NLAWs (Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapons) and anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine. He set the tone at the Munich Security Conference in February arguing that Putin “had to lose and be seen to lose”. Britain then led the moves to sanction Russian banks and gas. This is what an ethical foreign policy means, and he deserves credit for exercising leadership.

But it's not just about him.

Mr Johnson was elected by a very large majority and while that is no reason to avoid holding him to account, it does mean that he deserves a degree of respect as someone who represents the British people as a whole. We have to see beyond the personality to the office he occupies. We have free and fair elections – something Ukrainians are fighting and dying for. Democracy sometimes means that the “wrong” people get elected – like Mr Johnson. Our political culture has become so debased, that we almost assume politicians are crooks, charlatans or cretins.

When President Zelenskyy was elected in 2019, he too was called a “populist” and a “comedian”, which of course he was. Like Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi, his election was seen as a sign that democracy was in deep trouble. The academic David Runciman published a book entitled How Democracy Ends. But democracy has a habit of surprising all of us. An actor who played an accidental President in a soap opera turned out to be one of the greatest war leaders in modern times. It would not help Ukraine for his greatest ally to be driven from office for receiving the equivalent of a parking ticket.

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