Putin’s Sleeping Beauty
Four days before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin said: “Like it or not, take it, my beauty.” International lawyers interpreted this as a reference to a vulgar Russian rhyme about necrophiliac rape — implying an intention to inflict similar destruction on Ukraine and a view of Ukraine as a corpse.
This archetype analysis examines how Putin weaponised the Sleeping Beauty archetype — one of the primary archetypal characters in Indo-European culture — to declare war through gender violence.