I thought the Starbucks logo was a depiction of a Mermaid.
But I think 'Siren' is a much more interesting tie-in. Since they sell caffeine-sugar addictive drinks. The irresistible 'Siren' aligns more with the product.
"The Mixoparthenos (Greek: Μιξοπάρθενος) was a Greek mythological figure, a variety of Siren somewhat akin to a Mermaid, traditionally hailing from the Black Sea region"
I first learned about the Scythians in a small book written in 1880 about the Jewish Tribe of Dan. There was a very interesting analysis in the book comparing their oral history and origins.
Interestingly, before Turkic and Mongol nomads there were Indo-European nomads which were just as convincing. I wonder if ancient Greeks could actually understand some Scythian. They didn't diverge that long ago.
There were also Finnic nomads which manifested as Ungri turning Hungarians.
The last common ancestor language of Hellenic and Iranian languages dates back to something like 1500 years before their individual classifications, so it's quite unlikely Greeks understood Schythian languages.
Scythians were also illiterate, which I imagine would not have been the case for long if the languages were closely related.
Pretty much everything about Ukraine has been propagandized to hell and back, including its history, current events and the war. So of course you're going to get some crazy takes no matter which side of the political spectrum you're on.
I don’t really understand that. Before - yes. But now and on HN.
If people are really curious about Ukraine to the point that they want to express their takes why not to fly to Poland, cross the border and spend several month in Ukraine. See how things are, talk to people and so on?
Many people on HN definitely can afford that. Why just retell some story from one friend you have instead of going on the ground and talking to hundreds of people?
> why not to fly to Poland, cross the border and spend several month in Ukraine. See how things are, talk to people and so on?
Because, Ukraine lack systematic, and Russia have it.
For example, look on "list of Ukrainian products" - I from very first and very surface look, see it is outdated, as example, Petcube, Solargaps ceased, I only sure about Ajax functioning.
So, I think this is manually created list, without any automation. Appear question - where is famous Ukrainian IT? Why this list is not synchronized with banking transfers? And so on...
What I want to tell, from such nuances, Ukraine looks like small African country, not European, and Western people feel very much difference from powerful Russian propaganda.
Imagine, for example, France news services use systematic approach, when they seen public interest on Ukrainian region, they tried to hire cultural experts, and they just can't find Ukrainian experts, so they after long thoughts, hired Russians, thinking they should also know their neighbors, you understand how bad words I want to say, and this is not joke.
These things are very obvious for me as I mostly work for Western clients.
If you really want to help Ukraine, we could talk on more private channel, because I don't want to share with Russians know how.
Ukraine is a very small part of the lives of most people here and they are definitely not going to make that trip just to post a better comment of this website.
If you look at the "Selected readings" and "comments" sections you'll have a better idea of the sort of discussion I had been hoping for when submitting this link to HN.
(some nutty ideas mentioned, yes, but nutty ideas about things that happened thousands of years ago...)
I would extend it from Ukraine in particular to foreign policy in general. It's worse, genuinely, than large portions of Reddit.
On one hand there are the contrarian libertarian types that seem to flock to Silicon Valley and the VC sphere. Elon Musk, David Sachs, Peter Thiel, etc.
On the other hand there are are a lot of genuine tankies and campists, who (I assume) may have gone down that rabbit hole because of Snowden / Assange / Iraq and never taken a step back to re-evaluate their worldview as new events take place in less formative years.
And I think this is probably less of an issue on this particular website, but there's a third group of right-wing culture warriors that adopted the Russian propaganda framing Russia as the lone Christian Nationalist holdout in the war against the LGBT, multicultural, liberal West. Never mind that the Russian Orthodox Church is stuffed full of ex-KGB and FSB operatives.
Not a shadowban, and not a mistake. It is the inevitable outcome when an account breaks the site guidelines repeatedly and egregiously.
This is one of those cases where I bent over backwards to try to persuade before banning, including countless warnings on HN itself and dozens of emails back and forth, literally over many years. I don't think you'll find many websites where the moderators try that hard not to ban someone. But that can't go on forever and eventually the slack ran out.
The author's point about the "western elite" fighting on the secessionist side for free as part of a "culture war" might need some further elaboration. As I understand it the elite seems anti-secessionist.
I've got friends on both sides of this (who, for obvious reasons, don't talk to each other about it).
On the one hand, a Ukrainian citizen who was displaced by the war and wants nothing more than for it to never have happened.
On the other, a friend whose in-laws live in the now-Russian occupied parts, who have Russian identifying heritage, who envied the higher Russian pensions, and who didn't care overmuch about whether Moscow or Kiev took their money (both are corrupt). They prefer the notion of being part of Russia, in part because the social benefits are better, but also over resentment of contributed Western interference in the government of Ukraine. They, too, wish the war was over, and that the change hadn't been brought about by bloodshed, but they don't want to go back to the way things were either.
I have a hard time discounting the latter, if only because this guy is among the more level headed people I know and not prone to exaggeration or a war hawk of any sort.
What really bothers me is that the West keeps pussyfooting about; sending money and weapons into a war they can't be bothered to right themselves as if anyone in the world is pretending that means they aren't involved. It has needlessly drawn out the conflict and cost many more lives. They ought to have either stayed out, or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border.
> or entered with the purpose of making a definitive end of it at the original border.
There is a current argument that the tactic is absolutely necessary because the Russian structure absolutely relies on every level from the bottom to the top to be able to reasonably lie about how things are going. If you do nothing, they obviously win; if you do too much, you actually can lose because it is no longer possible for the lies to work properly to prevent more drastic moves. If you do what seems to be happening right now, the lies keep the machine turning at its current pace and they will drive themselves right off the cliff in no time. It was done economically to the USSR and the same thing appears to be happening right now more directly, militarily. It will seem to be this unstoppable force until the last moment, when it all just spectacularly falls apart in one way or another.
It's pointless. Russians don't give a fuck about lies being believable - neither the govenernment not the people.
They were indoctrinated to be cynical passive conformists for their whole lives, and their parents and grandparents likewise. They will go along with whatever, as long as they don't starve.
There's no point counting on them protesting, and there's no point trying "not to provoke them". They just aren't a factor.
West needs to ignore all that pussyfooting and send enough resources to make the war materially unsustainable for putin. That's all that matters.
It's not about lies to the people -- I didn't say it was about their control on society through media. I agree with you that the people are not the ones that are going to overthrow the government. I'm merely observing that the compounding negative effect of this domestic "lie chain" is a damage multiplier.
It's myopically about one's lies to their superior. At each level, the situation is portrayed less seriously by some amount to make it less "bad" for the individual. That continues up the chain so that at each point, it doesn't make sense for some drastic overreaction to happen. By the time it reaches the top, it's very divorced from reality.
Case in point, given the events of last evening -- the Black Sea Fleet is practically getting erased with no real change in behavior because it is happening slowly. I'm sure the story as it makes its way up the ranks each time is that the damage was minor, it's being repaired, only a few casualties, etc.
Acknowledging how bad the situation is to your superiors is acknowledging how effective naval drones and modern missiles are and how bad your harbor protection and air defense is. Again, they only care about money, not their people. Even in light of clear videos showing air defense being powerless to stop these attacks, they'll deny, deny, deny because they still have paying customers for their technology. Ukraine is taking out their refinery capacity and making those paying weapons customers think twice and change long-term behavior. (See yesterday's story about how India isn't going to get its planned S-400 delivery.)
I'm very pessimistic about such interpretations. They seem to me to be mostly western wishful thinking so I'm trying to consciously correct for that.
Yes, russians are incompetent, always have been. But most armies are to some degree, and they have been operating under strict darwinian selection for the last 2 years. They adapted to a lot of early tactics that no longer work. And they have time to adapt if the west doesn't help Ukraine finish the job early enough.
What west does is microdosing the antibiotics with pauses between the doses instead of pumping the necessary dose for 2 weeks and solving the problem. It's VERY irresponsible.
As for naval situation - Russian fleets have always been a joke, the only thing that matters is whether they can block the Black See (they can't), and whether they can use the ships to launch missiles (they can, but if they can't - they can just use ground and air launchers). So there's not much potential wins for Ukraine left there, even if they destroy the whole black see fleet. From Russian POV it's just more sunk costs (pardon the pun) and more PR problems. They aren't very sensitive to either.
Ultimately the war will end when Russia can't afford to keep its army in Ukraine or when it loses its army. The first one is easier to achieve, but that takes mass attacks on Russian infrastructure. Not 15 attacks but 100 or 1000. Repeated over and over, so that damage can't be repaired.
The west seems to be very restrictive with how Ukrainians can use the west-provided weapons, and that makes this approach unlikely to work in short term.
So then the last possible strategy is just hoping Russian economy will collapse. Which it will, don't get me wrong - but in Russia it's hard to distinguish collapsed and uncollapsed economy anyway.
We're in broad agreement. The only unknown is that of timing. Russia will not win. The collective "West" is helping very deeply, and part of the problem has been getting everyone closer to the conflict to realize there are no options other than force. That has taken much longer than it should have. (e.g., France's recent change in tone.) It is not such a doom-and-gloom picture -- Poland is leading the charge in terms of ramping up modern military capacity. Every participant nation is chipping in heavily to get the job done. More expensive air defense systems will give way to cheaper alternatives (F-16s, air drones, eventually lasers to neutralize "slow" drone and cruise missile threats), freeing them up to focus on ballistic threats. The front is going to be increasingly taken over by "unmanned" systems -- mine laying robots, loitering vehicles, automated fire vehicles/stations. Systematic destruction of A-50s is paving the way for fighters to operate with much less risk, taking out bomber threat and continuing to use HARMs to further reduce risk from S-300/400s and EW. Ukraine has been so effective in deep targeting of refineries, factories, airfields, at some point it will be time to turn attention to creative ways of stopping the air-launched threat from Olenya and others at the source. These things are won by logistics, and relying on continual delivered aid is a losing strategy. Everyone wants it to be over yesterday, but the only thing that will counter Russia's ability to whip a mobilization economy faster is collective sustainable local production done right. Russia was counting on the US, UK, etc. losing focus through election cycles, but the Eastern Bloc and Baltics will not lose focus. That was a big hurdle to overcome, and the leadership exhibited there helps ease fears that the outcome will solely be determined by what the US does or doesn't do. You couldn't have convinced me earlier Germany would be the ones dragging their feet and France would unambiguously flex muscle, but here we are.
> You couldn't have convinced me earlier Germany would be the ones dragging their feet and France would unambiguously flex muscle, but here we are.
This is a very Polish bias :) For the last 30 years France might as well not exist as far as Polish politicians and analysts go. It's bizzare. There's more on TV about irrelevant countries like Hungary or Israel than about France, and when somebody speaks about France it's almost always the most trivial stereotypes. Half the time is cloned conservative propaganda from USA, the other half - from Russia...
As for Baltics - they are doing a good job with what they have, but it's not enough.
> the only thing that will counter Russia's ability to whip a mobilization economy faster is collective sustainable local production done right
That's false. If west sent all the weapons it sent to Ukraine, but did it in the first 3 months - war would be over by now. It is still possible to finish the war quickly or slowly. Each month of delay is prolonging this war nonlinearly (by more than a month).
You're assuming the West's goal is ending the conflict. Their behavior is consistent with only one goal: a grinding down of Russia. Regardless of the final war outcome, Russia will emerge as a tertiary power: its male population diminished and its military shown as a paper tiger.
I hope some day we can grow beyond the childish notion that something as broad as "the West" can have a single goal or perfectly consistent behavior in the first place.
Estonia and Poland and Czechia have different goals and motivations than Germany, Germany has a different goals and motivations than France, who has different goals and motivations than the US, and within each of those entities are dozens of other entities with their own goals. Jake Sullivan has different goals and motivations than the General Staff, Congress has different goals and motivations than either. Macron has different goals and motivations than the French Parliament, SPD has different goals than the CDU and Greens, etc. etc. etc.
It's just silly. Of course the lowest common denominator is "weaken Russia" but that doesn't mean there are not substantial factions in favor of ending the conflict with victory.
These social benefits is something they can revoke anytime (with an apology). Remember that few years ago they simply upped pension age to the average life expectancy for men? “You work, then you die, please put money in this box.”
Even so, the Russian state pension is, on average, 160% more than the Ukrainian.
Either way, I didn't mean to imply that was enough for people to want war. Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government.
Ukrainians were considering this exact question for the last 30 years. East or West?
They started heavily biased towards Russia and by now it completely reversed. Mostly because they have seen how EU membership changed their neighbors.
Remember that Ukraine and Poland did Euro 2012 soccer championships together.
Remember that there have been millions of Ukrainians working, studying and visiting Poland before 2022.
Remember that Ukraine was noticeably wealthier than Poland in 1991. And in 2012 already it's been night and day in favour of Poland, Romania, Lithuania, etc.
This is what Putin worried about - that soft power-wise Russia can't compete. That's why he used hard power repeatedly. Because if soft power is all that there is - Russia just loses its former colonies (and then as Ukraine becomes wealthy and free - Russians might start asking "why can't we?").
One of the most important pillars of Russian Empire is that Russians belive in nothing and have no hope.
> Rather, had they been given free choice over which country rules where they lived, that would have been a stronger factor than any nationalist ties they had to the Ukrainian government.
The reality of occupied territories are filtration camps and torture rooms. There is no equivalence. Given the content and phrasing of your other posts - I know what you are, hence will proceed and welcome others to downvote them.
I apologize if that equivalence was implied in my statement. I'm imperfectly recalling a conversation I had almost a year ago at this point.
I think a better phrasing would be, given the option of who governed where they lived, the social benefits were a stronger draw than any sort of patriotic or nationalistic feeling they had toward Kiev.
I suspect many in Moscow expected this to go like the annexation of Crimea went- probably illegitimate, but small enough that it would be over quickly. After all, how could the tiny country of Ukraine possibly expect to hold a small territory out against the entire Russian military?
Clearly, that's not what happened. I don't think anyone living there now is glad it happened like this, let alone the people who aren't alive to voice their opinion on the matter.
I don’t doubt you, but it’s also true that there is no simple ‘ethnic Russian equals pro Russian/Putin’ equation. Take the Azov Battalion. Yes I know, an unpleasant, even despicable bunch of anti-Russian racists. However before 2022 they overwhelmingly consisted of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, recruited in the ethnic Russian regions. Their web site was in Russian, most of their literature in Russian.
How come? Being ethnic Russian doesn’t mean you’re a huge fan of the Moscow system, and it doesn’t mean you want to be ruled by Putin. When Donetsk and Luhansk voted in the independence referendum in the 90s both regions voted over 80% for Ukrainian independence. That’s not possible if a majority of ethnic Russians hadn’t been in favour of it.
Vast swathes of the east and south of Ukraine, where civilian areas were shelled to rubble by Russia, were populated by a high proportion of ethnic Russians. Look at the drone footage of the rows of apartment blocks shelled out in Mariupol, a city 50% ethnic Russian and overwhelmingly Russian speaking. The Narative of ethnic Russian liberation is far from simple.
Independence referendum of 1991 was about whether UkrSSR will admit the dissolution of already defunct USSR or if it will continue its quasi-state existence. Even then they didn't get everybody on board.
It was not a referendum on "independence from Russia" because UkrSSR and RSFSR were distinct entites for 60 years already.
Then again, people could change their mind about being a part of the state of Ukraine.
The evidence that it has significantly happened is the 2014 LDNR referendums and the following harsh resistance of Donbas militias against Ukrainian forces (absolute majority of the soldiets being locals since how would you convince a large number of Russians to go and risk their lives in an unrecognized state).
Donbas population is basically miners bearing automatic weapons. Not too easy to control if they oppose you on a fundamental level.
If the West hadn't sent money or arms to Ukraine, they would have lost a long time ago. The fact that it has dragged on as long as it has being due to Western interference is incontrovertible.
You're also right that either Putin or Ukraine could give up at any point. That's rather orthogonal to his point, though.
> The fact that it has dragged on as long as it has being due to Western interference is incontrovertible.
It is disputable. If Ukrainian forces were defeated conventionally, the resistance would just move underground, to a guerilla warfare.
But it's a strange argument. On one hand it's factual, but what do you want to say with that? That Ukraine completely subjugated by Russia would be preferable to the current state? For whom? Ukrainians clearly prefer the current state of things over subjugation, but then people like you basically claim that they're wrong in their preference.
Getting crushed between superpowers is probably one of the worst national nightmares. You can just hope your elite is intellectual(?) enough to not put themself in that position on your behalf.
I wonder how much such disconcert for drafting is due to running low on nationalistic types that more or less volunteer. I think most people just fake their nationalistic support to not be beaten with sticks or whatever, when it really comes down to it, they bail if possible. I guess there is a reason the borders are closed for men draft dodging.
I mean, there surely can't be a greater part of the community that would by their own free will put them self into a trench, than would volunteer to run as a coach or whatever the local soccer team or equivalent.
> “Although there is some evidence of fatigue, Ukrainians overall remain committed to winning the war,” Ray said. Continued approval of the army and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she added, are key to victory.
> Ukrainians are deeply confident in their military, with approval ratings at a record high of 95%, according to Gallup. Support for Zelenskyy has faltered slightly but is still overwhelmingly strong at 81%.
...
> Just look at the blooming garden that is liberated Iraq.
That's a weird example. Why not look at the nearby Baltics or Poland instead, who similarly to Ukraine, has chosen West as opposed to Russia.
I don't think it's weird at all. Also, Poland has always been Western aligned (Catholicism and all). Kosovo would be a better example of a switch after a conflict, and it is far from blooming.
Ukraine has been the meeting point of the West (basically Poland) and East (basically Russia) for its entire history. The places at the interface of two cultures often see conflict. Ukraine does have a political party that argues for neutrality (Party of the Regions). Currently they are being cast as pro-Russian, but if you study their prewar position it is not the case at all.
If Ukraine gives up, people will be genocided. If Putin gives up, he just can announce that the goals of his special military operation have been reached and continue living as it's now.
This sounds a lot like propaganda. Also, "giving up" doesn't mean giving up unconditionally. An agreement can be made that provides guarantees for the safety of the people.
> An agreement can be made that provides guarantees for the safety of the people.
We already have several of those. In Helsinki in 1975, all European countries (including the USSR) agreed to refrain from violently changing borders in Europe.[1] In Budapest in 1994, Russia reiterated the commitment, promising to respect sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons.[2] How do you suggest these, or any future agreements, should be enforced when Russia chooses to violate them?
Not to mention that Russia has become one the most oppressive countries in the world. What guarantees do you expect from a country that severly abuses the human rights of its population? That they won't abuse Ukrainians more than they do ethnic Russians when Russian officials imprison people for anti-war poems, raid gay bars, beat and rape protesters and murder dissidents?
The opinion of one of the most prominent political scientists in the US, John Mearsheimer, is that this conflict has in the making for many years, because of the continuous expansion of NATO towards east and provocative actions of the US.
This premise is important because understanding the causes, or motives, of the war is central in thinking about possible resolutions. If the cause of the war is Putin's crazy wickedness and its goal is the extermination of Ukrainians, there is no peace possible. If the cause of the war is an actual problem of politics, resources, national cohesion, alliances, you name it- then something can be agreed upon that stops the conflict now, saves the lives of hundreds of thousands on both sides, and buys a few more years. It will not be a just solution but it can be an acceptable one. And works the other way around too: if you don't want the conflict to stop, for whatever reason, you will tell people that no agreement is possible because the end goal of the other side is total extermination.
The reason for the war is clearly stated by russian officials and propaganda: they want their empire to extend, and they (Medvedev as example) directly say that Ukrainians are "artificial" nation and should not exist.
Any deal with russians doesn't mean anything to them, they proved it many times.
As for Mearsheimer, let him comment how the appeasement worked out with Hitler.
I'm Ukrainian who left the village I was in one day before russians entered it. In a short time they were there, they killed 80+ civilians. Lots of similar cases are well documented everywhere. It's not a propaganda, it's fact.
Russians are brutal, no doubt about it. But- even knowing Ukraine is a vast country with big differences between the western and eastern regions- are there cultural, ethnic and linguistic differences so deep between Russia and Ukraine that Russia's purpose would be extermination, rather than annexation of the easternmost regions and cultural assimilation?
Honest question, obviously you know and understand this much better than I do, so feel free to bash my ignorance.
Their "assimilation" is basically a genocide: they displace people, "reeducate" children and move them from their parents to russian families, forcibly conscript Ukrainians on the occupied territories to die in wars etc.
And of course, they do not hesitate to torture and kill lots of people in the process just because they are as they are.
If you check what they tell, their next goal after conquering Ukraine (and expanding the army with Ukrainians) will be going for Baltics or Kazakhstan.
There are lots of officially confirmed reports regarding killed civilians. Is UN a good source for you?
I've checked your account and you basically comment only on political issues.
> Oh, and a 12 year old HN account originating in a tiny Ukrainian village that
> has been massacred and yet completely stayed out of all news?
Very primitive manipulation. I never told I "originated" in that village, never told it is tiny, never told it has been completely massacred.
A very basic search on my submissions will show my name and what I do. I am very sorry that HN allows russian(-sponsored) trolls to be here.
Your post was not a disagreement. You intentionally rephrased what I said and implied that I'm lying and all the atrocities (many of them, but not all, well documented) done by russians are propaganda.
By doing this, you help russians to continue their genocide.
If there is a genocide going on, it's not the side you are thinking of that is perpetuating it.
But you'll just say that Wikipedia is wrong, and the UN sources they are citing are Russian propaganda. Also, you still didn't respond to the substance of my argument.
It's quite ironic how you wrote exactly the opposite regarding Palestine in another thread:
>Gaza is just a region of Palestine. Palestine is an occupied territory. A fast and enduring solution to the conflict is that Israel ceases its military and civilian occupation of Palestine and withdraws to its internationally recognized borders: those of pre-1967. Period.
The situation of Palestine is entirely different from that of Ukraine. The Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" is centered on ethnicity. Israelis have made clear multiple times that they want the whole land for an ethnic state that excludes Palestinians (which yes, means either ethnic cleansing or genocide). And there is no interest on Israel's part in any agreement to end the conflict- because it's only thanks to the conflict that Israel can keep expanding its territory. Mind, the conflict can still end through negotiations and guarantees for both sides, exactly as in the case of Russia and Ukraine; it would just be- let' say- helpful, if the major states stopped siding with the invader and oppressor and started sanctioning it, exactly as they did with Russia.
> An agreement can be made that provides guarantees for the safety of the people.
Lol. LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Lmao.
Ukrainians have seen that play before. Many, many times. Every single time it's just a maneuver for Putin to get into a better position to fuck them over in the future. Budapest Memorandum, Minsk 1, Minsk 2, multiple local ceasefire agreements, the Black Sea Grain Initiative... what happened to Prigozhin being a nice recent example.
I read that to mean generally supporting self-determination and helping give a voice to the "underdog", when oppressed. If a movement is not oppressed, it's generally harder to justify why their desires can not be expressed in a voting booth. Just by stating unsupported "alternative facts", bad actors know there will be a non-zero amount of people, regardless of political ideology, that will pick up and side with their narrative for a variety of reasons. Like most of the nonsense spewed on social media, it's quite literally free for them to throw out a few nonsense sentences in a variety of ways. Anything that "sticks" only helps, so... why not? That is how we arrived where we are today. There is no feedback mechanism or downside to stating falsehoods online. We incorrectly try to apply reputation feedback mechanisms to actors that absolutely do not care about reputation in the eyes of average citizens. They do care about legacy and history books, which conveniently they control in their top-down managed society.
Sorry, I don't know English well, but can't go by and not correct such a naive view of what's going on, if something is unclear - ask me again, I will formulate it in other words.
The culture wars seem to be true, it is a very convenient narrative for an outside audience. But Putin doesn't need the resources, or rather the people who are interested in the resources are a bit lower in Putin's food chain. Putin himself needs to stay in power if he doesn't want to go to jail for life and lose everything, along with his "Ozero" cooperative, because that's exactly what any next president whom Putin doesn't have by the balls will do.
And for that he needs conflicts with the old narrative of a "strong leader" who will enemies "kill in a toilet" and therefore no one but Putin is good enough. And Ukraine does not stand out here against the background of him past "merits", because it is quite natural for authoritarianism to increase the degree of violence, otherwise a weak "leader" autocrat will be swept away by a more brutal neighbor in the "elites", or even a "color revolution" will work.
This was the case in 1999 with Chechnya when Putin blew up houses in Russia pretending it was Chechen terrorism. In 2008 with Georgia the Kremlin propaganda called it a "small victorious war" after which the whole world stuck its tongue up its ass and Putin liked it. Then in 2014 Putin decided to repeat the "small victorious war" now with Ukraine, and again the whole world was imitating stormy activities instead of listening to the opposition in Russia, which was already shouting that Putin is a thief and a murderer. And now it's turned into a full scale war in 2022, and it's only going to get worse from here until Putin die.
That's roughly how things are IRL in my opinion, so resources are not the goal here.
Agree with your first points, not sure about your second. People keep trying to impose rational goals onto Putin (like, "resources", or "NATO") while completely ignoring the irrational ones he states outright. But actually there's plenty of evidence that he actually believes all this irrational horseshit about Ukrainians being a fake people invented by the Poles (who also started WWII). It's almost like people are generating Russian-style propaganda themselves in their own minds: reject what's in front of your face and substitute it with whatever story you're most prone to believing.
Anyway, on a related note, this is perhaps the best series of videos I've seen on the historical background of the war.
But I think 'Siren' is a much more interesting tie-in. Since they sell caffeine-sugar addictive drinks. The irresistible 'Siren' aligns more with the product.
"The Mixoparthenos (Greek: Μιξοπάρθενος) was a Greek mythological figure, a variety of Siren somewhat akin to a Mermaid, traditionally hailing from the Black Sea region"