choirs that were going to celebrate the New Year with Russian soldiers deployed in Syria , crashed in the Black Sea shortly after takeo ) have often been used by both the CIA and the Kremlin to paint a favorable portrait of the countries they represent . Similarly , the outcome of military battles has sometimes been decided by the cultural beliefs of the protagonists . Also , at the time of Ancient Rome , the motivations that led Hannibal not to seek to take Rome have been the subject of debate for centuries , yet on at least two occasions ( after the battles of Lake Trasimeno and Cannae ) he would have been in a reasonable position to attempt such a venture , but never did . The answer is potentially found in the cultural environment in which Hannibal was imbued , educated by a Spartan tutor , Solysos , who had taught him , in addition to a Greek-style education as a scholar , the conquests of Alexander the Great and the military history of Greece . However , in the Greek military conception , wars were decided by battles in the field , following which the losers saw themselves obliged to negotiate peace to avoid seeing the cultures surrounding the territory of their city-state ravaged by the winners , leading slowly but surely to the fall of the latter by starvation . Also in the Ukrainian conflict , we have seen that Putin ' s Russia knowingly avoided bringing down Kyiv , which is the seat of Christian orthodoxy in Eastern Europe . And similarly , by ravaging the other cities in the periphery Vladimir Putin who surely is a man of letters in the ancient culture doubtless hoped that the government of Kyiv led by the former comedian Zelensky would negotiate peace . Unfortunately for the Russians , it was without counting the fact that Zelensky , who is of the Jewish faith , does not have the same respect for Christian orthodoxy as the majority of Ukrainians , apart from the fact that he is formatted in the Atlanticist ideology , which since allows him to rely on Western media to pass message during major Western cultural events . Message which are not often in the interest of Ukraine , or peace , but of those who have an interest in using Ukraine as a shield against their political and economic adversary .
Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr . Journalist
16 Flashmag ! Issue 129 May 2022