For Yevhen Fedchenko, the information war hit home when his aunt said she would not come to visit because she believed she would be beaten and killed in Ukraine for speaking Russian.
For Alya Shandra, it was her Danish then-boyfriend's decision to abandon a visit to Kyiv because he thought there were Nazis in Ukraine.
They both became so angry at the refusal of their loved ones to set foot in Ukraine because of what they had read, heard or watched about the country in 2014 — when mass protests in central Kyiv toppled an unpopular pro-Russian president — that they decided to find ways to challenge a narrative they rejected.