Regarding the creation of a dragon, back after Trump got exposed trying to extort Ukraine into investigating Hunter Biden in return for military aid, but before the 2020 election, there was some of this. Trump and his various mouthpieces started to try to get people to believe that it was Ukraine and not Russia that influenced the 2016 US Presidential election, and that they would try to do it again in 2020. I don't think very many people believed it back then except Trump's blindest hangers-on.
Anyway, I always thought that was a little weird because I never saw Ukraine as having the need or the will to influence US politics given that their plate is full dealing with Russia. Russia on the other hand, would definitely have an interest, considering what they did in Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea. They would definitely have an interest in having a US President who kissed Putin's ass and verbally antagonized the other leaders of NATO, as Trump later proved to be, because someone like that would keep the West distracted while Putin did whatever she wanted.
These were just suspicions I had that I kept to myself. There was this weird effort to make Ukraine into the bad guy that never really took off and obviously flew in the face of all evidence, and I was just thinking, "What was the purpose of that?" Then this war started and I started thinking that maybe it was a way to get us to distrust Ukraine so we and anyone else wouldn't support them. But it didn't work because 1. It sounded stupid as fuck and 2. We (the US voters) tossed Trump's KGB-asset rear end into the street where he deserves.
Probably me just wearing my tinfoil hat. :T