He always said he was here to help, but former prime minister Kevin Rudd never said his capacity to render aid was confined to national borders.
Having been liberated from Australia's top job last year by Tony ''Che'' Abbott, Rudd is now sans frontieres, and for his latest foray into helpfulness he has chosen the globe's neediest nation: Ukraine.
Illustration: Cathy Wilcox
Those muppets in Canberra can have their petty squabbles over the future of aviation and the national accounts. These days, the horizons of One K Rudd are far broader, according to reports.
Like a silver-mopped cross between Jimmy Carter and Florence Nightingale, the former prime minister has jetted into Moscow, with plans to meet advisers to President Vladimir Putin, a man who, confusingly, has denied that Russia plans to invade Ukraine, while simultaneously sending troops to occupy the Crimean peninsula.
Late on Wednesday, a Ruddian spokeswoman denied reports the man was scheduled to travel to Ukraine to stand in front of any actual tanks, or make other, more Rudd-esque efforts to stave off impending conflict, perhaps using a combination of Dad jokes and folksy talk to diffuse tensions.
But Rudd has denied so very many things in the past, hasn't he? If you could bottle and export his capacity for turning up at the most opportune of moments and then denying he is planning anything untoward, you could lift the GDP several points in a single stroke.
On Wednesday Foreign Minister Julie Bishop informed Parliament that the travel advisory of the Australian government had been updated to ''urge Australians who are considering travelling to Ukraine … to reconsider their need to travel''.
But Rudd has never played by anyone's rules, and a trip to Kiev would be the perfect opportunity to showcase what so few have ever doubted - that there is an ''I'' in Kev.
Even if Rudd doesn't make it all the way to Ukraine, his capacity for ''dialogue'' (which is exactly what our Foreign Minister has urged Russia to engage in) is so prodigious that it can surely jump the border to save the Slavs.
Rudd's trip comes as part of a broader tour, of the UK and Europe, to conduct research for his Harvard Kennedy School project on China's role in the new world order.
But it is whispered that it is K Rudd's own place in the new world order that is front of his mind. Nothing, say un-named foreign affairs observers, would suit the Ruddster better than the UN's top job - secretary-general.
Whether or not these rumours are true, such a role would be the largest, and therefore the best, podium from which Kevin could help.