As summer shadows lengthened over Kyiv on Tuesday evening, thousands of Ukrainians, most of them women and some veterans of the war, gathered a few blocks from the presidential office on Bankova Street, chanting “shame”.

It was the first and only significant protest against Volodymyr Zelensky’s government since the full-scale Russian invasion began, fracturing the national unity that has helped Ukraine resist Russia’s aggression and setting alarm bells ringing among Kyiv’s allies.