A picture, we’re told, is worth a thousand words. If so, the one of Vladimir Putin sitting opposite Emmanuel Macron across a 45-feet long oval table in the Kremlin symbolised the gulf between Russia and Nato on Ukraine.

The Russian President’s coercive diplomacy appears to have the West exactly where he wants it: scrambling in a diplomatic flurry; senior foreign figure after senior figure arriving in Moscow to make their appeals but simply creating an echo in the vast gilded Kremlin.

Macron was put in his place by his host; kept waiting for almost two hours before Putin deigned to grant the French President an audience. The only thing missing when they finally sat across that vast expanse of wood was a megaphone.

After five hours of talks over a six-course dinner, Macron emerged to claim a diplomatic victory: Putin had assured him Russia would not be the one to escalate tensions. The Russian leader complained his French guest had talked for so long “he was almost torturing me”. And he’s a former KGB agent.

But within minutes, the Kremlin made clear Macron was “fundamentally wrong” in suggesting that Putin had agreed to de-escalate. It was “simply impossible” for Moscow and Paris to do any deals, it insisted.

In a joint press conference, Putin eyeballed a French journalist, warning her if Ukraine joined Nato, there would be war. “Ask your readers, viewers, internet-users: do you want France to fight with Russia? Because that’s the way it will be,” he snapped.

Yesterday, the revolving door of diplomacy continued to turn. Liz Truss popped up in Moscow for, firstly another Thatcher-like photoshoot, and then sub-zero talks with her counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.

Truss’s death stare didn’t go down well. Russian eyeballs rolled as she urged Moscow to drop the “Cold War rhetoric” and to respect the 1994 Budapest memorandum, committing the UK, US and Russia to uphold Ukrainian independence. A military invasion, she warned, would be “disastrous” not only for Ukraine but also for Russia and European security.

The Secretary of State repeated that continued Russian “aggression” would lead to “severe consequences” ie the toughest of sanctions.

But the wily Lavrov accused the West of “hysteria”. Its “ultimatums and threats” were a “dead end and will yield nothing”.

Noting how Russian troops would return to their bases after the current 10-day joint military exercise in Belarus, he argued it was the West, not Russia, which was raising tensions.

Although, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, didn’t help lighten the mood when he told a TV interview recently the West wanted to “drown the Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood in blood” and pledged in any military action his country’s troops would fight alongside their Russian comrades.

“It will be a joint response. Do you think we’re joking around on the southern border today?” he blasted.

Lavrov also noted how British-Russian relations were at their “lowest point in years”. Who, one might ask, is to blame for that after the 2018 Salisbury poisonings?

Moscow’s contempt for the UK was displayed earlier this month when Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, denounced the “stupidity and ignorance of Anglo-Saxon politicians” in reference to Truss while Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, declared: “Frankly, we don’t trust British diplomacy…It is absolutely worthless.”

This week, six Russian warships and a submarine entered the Black Sea just to increase the tensions created by the land build-up of 140,000 Russian troops and swaths of military hardware.

On Wednesday, Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s EU ambassador, complained that amid all the talk of Moscow planning an invasion no-one was mentioning the number of Ukrainian soldiers facing Russia. Probably because they are not threatening to invade.

Chizhov again stressed Russia had no invasion plans but then, ominously, added it was important, of course, not to provoke Moscow into changing its mind.

Yesterday, Boris Johnson was also on the diplomacy shuttle, saying after talks in Brussels with Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato Secretary-General, the Ukraine-Russia crisis was now at its “most dangerous moment” and war would be an “absolute disaster”.

He made clear Nato could not accept the Kremlin’s key demand that there should be no further enlargement of the alliance.

“As an alliance we must draw lines in the snow and be clear there are principles upon which we will not compromise.

“That includes the security of every Nato ally and the right of every European democracy to aspire to Nato membership,” said the PM.

Later, he was in Warsaw to reassure Britain’s eastern European allies about the UK’s support.

He visited British troops stationed in the country; the UK has pledged to send a further 350 soldiers in addition to the 100 Royal Engineers already there.

Today, it’s the turn of Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, to walk across Red Square when he meets his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu.

He said UK defence chiefs expected moves from the “Russian playbook,” that would give a “pretext for an invasion or some other activity”.

Wallace warned eastern European countries such as Poland and Romania would “feel the heat” of an invasion of Ukraine because of “very large movements of people as refugees”.

This week, Downing St announced 1,000 British troops were on standby

in case of a humanitarian crisis in

eastern Europe should Russia invade Ukraine.

Not to be outdone on the diplomatic front, Sir Keir Starmer was also in the Belgian capital yesterday to meet Stoltenberg to show solidarity with Ukraine but also to sweep away the party’s perceived weak stance on defence under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

The Labour leader insisted: “We are firm and united in our support for Nato.”

At the end of those frosty exchanges between Truss and Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister noted how the talks had turned into a “comedy,” likening them to a “conversation between a mute and a deaf person”.

Surely this is one of those occasions when politicians have to become statesmen and use the art of diplomacy to reach a peaceful resolution because no one will be laughing if they fail.