For a few brief moments on Sunday 22 January it was as though Boris Johnson was the British prime minister again. He strode through central Kyiv, quilted jacket flapping, tie askew, to greet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. As the waiting camera crew filmed, Johnson promised to be “a foot soldier, a spear carrier”, in the effort to help Ukraine. He assured Zelensky, “I will do whatever I can.”
Yet even as Johnson was playing the statesman in Kyiv he was enmeshed in fresh scandal at home, and the memories of how his inglorious reign ended last July came flooding back.
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