Boris Johnson is keen we don't jump to conclusions about Russia – but only where Tory money is concerned

While others make wild assumptions about who did the dirty work in Salisbury, and about the Tory tradition of turning a blind nose to the dirty money which funds them, this diplomatic goliath has an unswerving commitment to gathering evidence before forming a judgment

The people of Russia are voting for their President as I write, and the odds appear to favour a certain Vladimir Putin.

Let’s not assume, though, because that can make a right ass out of u and me. In these volatile days, as recent Anglo-American results confirm, nothing may be taken for granted in an open and vibrant democracy.

Putin faces a fearsome array of challengers, including the leader of the Octuple The Vodka Tax Party, the two East Siberian brown bears running jointly on the Legalise Ursine Homosexual Marriage platform, and a pro-Ukrainian glove puppet which goes by the name of Kiev Swears Death To All Russian Scum.

Despite this fierce competition, even the most stridently anti-Putin voices on the Russia Today network predict the incumbent will scrape home for what will sadly be his final six-year term, until he changes the constitution in the fashion of China’s President Xi.

So it is, without wishing to jump the Kalashnikov and risk looking daft when the gay bears romp home, that all the interest in Moscow concerns what vital personnel changes Putin will make once duly returned to the Kremlin.

My fervent hope is that he promotes his EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, to foreign secretary. Chizhov is a hugely gifted and credible diplomat, as he showed today in conversation with Andrew Marr. This quietly spoken strong man could one day run for President himself under the “Oi, Nato, Don’t Cheese Off Chizhov!” banner.

For now, with him and Boris Johnson working together, the tensions between our two great nations might quickly be defused. It would understate Chizhov’s defence of his homeland, in the matter of the Salisbury attacks, to call it masterly. It was genius.

There is no evidence that the Russian state was behind the attempted murder of a Russian traitor, he explained, with a nerve agent made exclusively by the Russian state in Russia.

Insisting that Boris Yeltsin had all such weapons destroyed in 1992, and that Russia never made this one anyway, he advanced a rival theory. The Porton Down laboratory might be guilty, he opined, it being just eight miles from Salisbury.

Even without dwelling on any motive, he made a compelling case. In a world of motorised transport, of course, the distance between the two places would be less incriminating.

But in this horse-and-cart era, while high-speed travel remains the fantasy of science fiction novelists such as HG Wells, an aerosol can’s journey from Russia to Wiltshire would be too long and perilous to contemplate. One dramatic swell of the sea, and the rowing boat could capsize with all hands and Novichok lost overboard.

Besides, his country has been doing its damnedest to assist the investigation. “Russia offered cooperation from the outset, but we didn’t get any response from the Foreign Office or any other agency.” The nerve!

What kept Boris Johnson too busy to reply to that generous offer isn’t known, but my hunch is he was frantically practising his tennis. Following Chizhov on Marr’s show, Boris was every inch a match for this potential future counterpart.

After dismissing the Porton Down claim as “a satirical suggestion”, he was asked about the Tory penchant for taking cash from Russians with opaque sources of personal wealth.

He was reminded that, at one of those delightful fundraising auctions, the wife a former Putin finance minister bid £160,000 for a game of tennis with him. Boris brushed that aside as deftly as Theresa May did when Jeremy Corbyn raised the funding issue in the Commons. Only when there is “evidence of gross corruption”, he said, would it be correct to refuse such largesse.

Quite right. Incontrovertible evidence should always be required before anyone accuses Russians of anything. This is why no Conservative such as Boris dared suggest Corbyn was being unpatriotic when he made the identical point a few days ago.

That same Russian woman, one Lubov Chernukhin, has since paid another £30,000 to sit next to Gavin Williamson at a dinner. Is Boris, asked Marr, happy about that?

No one should be content, frankly, least of all Chernukhin. To offer 30p for the Defence Secretary’s company is to make an informal but urgent request for a psychiatric appraisal. Anyone sane with Chernukhin’s money would bid £30,000 to avoid two minutes in the vicinity of that bumptious little pipsqueak.

But neither this, nor the hypocrisy of threatening the Magnitsky Act against the kind of Muscovite visitors whom Boris and May were previously delighted to relieve of their wads, was what worried Boris.

All that makes him unhappy in this context is people traitorously turning their fire on Tory funding while victims lie gravely ill in hospital. Boris’s only fault is that, if anything, he cares too much (Esther Rantzen Syndrome by proxy) – and as with the effects of certain nerve agents, there doesn’t seem to be a cure yet for that.

While others make wild assumptions about who did the dirty work in Salisbury, and about the Tory tradition of turning a blind nose to the dirty money which funds them, these diplomatic goliaths are united by their unswerving commitment to gathering evidence before forming a judgment.

If Putin can hold off the glove puppet, the sooner he yokes the duo on the global stage, the better our chances of getting through this with the national grid safe from cyber attack.

Boris and Chizhov deserve each other. Not as much, perhaps, as Madame Chernukhin and Private Pike. But enough.