If there was any tension, the two men did their best not to show it — with smiles, warm words and firm denials dominating a press conference between US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

No, there was no implied quid-pro-quo, said Mr Pompeo; there was no push to make Ukraine’s new leader open an investigation into Joe Biden in exchange for a White House visit and/or military assistance.

No, there was no way impeachment had sullied the relations between Ukraine and the United States, said Mr Zelensky. If anything, the “contrary” was true: “The Unites States really supports and defends us.”

It was a time for deeds not words, the men agreed.

Yet apart from the warm words, president Donald Trump’s chief envoy offered little in the way of new commitments. There would, for example, be no offer of a visit to the White House in the foreseeable future. Some had speculated this might be offered in a bid to reduce Mr Trump’s impeachment pains in Washington.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

“We will find the right time, an important opportunity,” the secretary of state said. “We want to make sure it happens when there is substantial progress.”

Mr Zelensky said that he would be “prepared to fly tomorrow” given the opportunity.

Behind the warm facade, the Ukrainian leader is all too aware of the prevailing difficulties in relations. Not only has Ukraine become a subject of a US domestic tug-of-war — and now largely mentioned in negative terms such as corruption — Donald Trump is much less forward in support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia than Barack Obama ever was.

Much of Mr Trump's foreign policy, from Syria to NATO, has aligned with Moscow. His withholding of $391m million of military assistance to Ukraine, apparently in exchange for probing conspiracy theories into rival Joe Biden, is meanwhile at the centre of a 4 month long impeachment inquiry. Today's visit by Mr Pompeo was the first visit by a top Trump official to Ukraine since the investigation began.

Ukrainian anxieties were amplified last Friday when NPR journalist Mary Louise Kelly published her account of a scandalous interview with Mike Pompeo.

Upon being questioned on Ukraine, the secretary of state alleged to have snapped “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”, using an expletive in the sentence. He later accused the journalist of lying but did not dispute the substance of what she reported.