Nearly eight months later, the war in Ukraine hangs in the balance. Ukrainian counter-attacks continue, while Russian forces are still building pressure elsewhere.
But on the Internet it is a very one-sided affair.
“This is a meme nation,” says Kyiv entrepreneur Olena, who manages teams of social media volunteers.
"If it was a war of memes, we would have won."
Olenna is not her real name. Due to the sensitive nature of the work he and his team perform on behalf of Ukraine's Defense Ministry, he has asked to remain anonymous.
Their teams work round the clock, responding to news from across the country within hours, producing punch videos, often set to music, for ministry audiences at home and abroad.
Just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers speeches to foreign parliaments with local history, culture and sensibility in mind, Olena's five-strong international team targets her messages.
A June video thanking Britain for military aid featured music from Gustav Holst and The Clash with glimpses of Shakespeare, David Bowie, Lewis Hamilton and a collection of British-supplied anti-tank weapons in action .
Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to supply Caesar self-propelled guns was greeted with a video that said: "Romantic gestures take many forms".
Images of red roses, chocolates, the Parisian skyline, followed by guns in action, were set - perhaps inevitably - to the voices of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's breathless je taime moi non plus.
For the Macron-Zelensky bromance, it was suggestive and completely tongue-in-cheek.
Olena says one of her favorite "thank you" videos praised Sweden for its cost-per-money investment in Ukraine: the $20,000 (£17,900) Carl Gustav rocket launcher, destroying $4.5m worth of Russian T-90 tanks capable of doing.
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