That is not her only grievance with the West. At a Nato summit in Bucharest in 2008, during her second term as prime minister, the alliance failed to provide Ukraine with an action plan for membership, stating only that Kyiv would be able join at an undefined date in the future. The decision is now widely seen as having encouraged Russia’s belief that western countries were not prepared to risk a conflict with Moscow to defend Kyiv.

The United States had wanted to admit both Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet state, to Nato’s membership action plan but France and Germany objected, fearing that it would anger the Kremlin. There was also opposition inside Ukraine, where an opinion poll just before the Bucharest summit showed that one in two voters opposed Nato membership, while just one in four were in favour. The rest were undecided.

. . . “For today’s war — for the lives lost and broken, for the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages, for the suffering of millions — responsibility also lies with those [western] leaders who voted against granting Ukraine a Membership Action Plan,” she said.

Nato has still not offered Ukraine a path to membership and President Trump said this year that he sympathised with Russia’s claim that the alliance’s eastwards expansion was a threat to its national security. Ukraine joining Nato, he said in February, “is not going to happen”.