Nothing could be simpler than the procedure for casting a vote in the United Nations Security Council. Fifteen ambassadors gather around a horseshoe table, beneath a mural of a phoenix escaping the ashes, and raise their hands like obedient pupils.

Until Donald Trump regained the White House, the easiest duty of America’s representative was to vote alongside Britain and France to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as exactly the kind of bloodsoaked tragedy which the UN was created to prevent.

But no longer. When the Security Council marked the third anniversary of the onslaught on Monday, there was stunned silence in the chamber as America’s acting ambassador, Dorothy Camille Shea, raised her hand not with her allies but with Russia and China, supporting a perfunctory three-paragraph Resolution devoid of any condemnation of the Kremlin, as if Ukraine’s calamity was a natural disaster for which no-one could be blamed. Britain and France, abandoned by their companion, were left to abstain.