Putin, who has maintained the same “tight team” of top diplomats around him for the past 25 years, dispatched his Stanford-educated economic adviser Kirill Dmitriev, former ambassador to Washington Yuri Ushakov, and Sergei Lavrov, his comic villain foreign minister, to recent talks in Saudi Arabia.

“These guys are really skilled diplomats. They all speak absolutely excellent English,” said Hill. “They can talk the hind leg off a donkey. They can turn you around in circles. They’ve got an answer for everything.”

Batting for the US are Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s erstwhile national security adviser, and his special envoy Steve Witkoff, a former real estate dealer. Between them, they have less than a year’s-worth of cabinet-level experience.

So, what does the dancing Russian bear make of these three cotillion debutantes? “They’re eating the neophytes on the US side for dinner,” said Hill.

I saw Hill’s testimony and she is extremely credible and intelligent. This is her bottom line, and it is that we are fighting global information and geopolitical warfare against a merciless and shrewd veteran with a clown car circus act.