"This ignorance of Ukraine has always been aggravating, but no one regarded it as a national security threat until the start of the Kremlin’s hybrid war against Ukraine. All that changed when “little green men” began appearing in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. It soon became clear that disinformation would play a key role in the Kremlin’s hybrid war, with Russia’s information offensive relying heavily on outside ignorance of Ukraine. Ukrainians watched in horror as the country’s complex relationship with its Tsarist and Soviet past was reduced to the tribal binary of Russian-speakers versus Ukrainian-speakers. Ukraine was depicted as a fascist junta, a Nazi dictatorship, and a failed state. These nightmarish visions gained remarkable levels of traction in the international media, largely because Ukraine was such an unknown quantity."