Five Thousand Miles

On two members of the same family, one week, and what the distance between Washington and Kyiv actually measures

There is a particular kind of week that clarifies things. Not by argument or analysis, but simply by arrangement, by the accidental or perhaps not entirely accidental juxtaposition of events that, read together, say something that no single event could say alone. Last week was that kind of week.

On Thursday the 23rd of April, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, stepped off an overnight train from Poland onto a platform at Kyiv railway station. The visit was unannounced. He was there to speak at the Kyiv Security Forum, to visit demining teams from the HALO Trust near Bucha, and to spend time with Ukrainian participants in his Invictus Games Foundation.

Five days later, on Tuesday the 28th of April, King Charles III stood at the podium of the United States Congress, addressed both its chambers simultaneously, received approximately a dozen standing ovations, and delivered what my colleagues at the Guardian correctly called a masterclass in less-is-more diplomacy. He spoke of Ukraine. The chamber roared.

I want to be careful about how I frame what follows, because the temptation, which I will resist, is to make this a story about one man succeeding and another failing. That is not the story. The story is more interesting and, I think, more important than that.