This whole situation reminds me of a pen and paper game I once played. The GM would throw a deadly encounter at us. Once we beat it, he'd frown, award us a rusted weapon or some such as loot, and then the storyline would continue with our characters in a worse situation than before every battle.
Unsurprisingly, we quickly found other things we had to do on game night.
This is a "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. If Soter and all the others beat the Sansha, well, it's not even a Pyrrhic victory - the Sansha always manage some abductions, and always get what they came for. If Soter and company don't intercept the Sansha, the Sansha abduct even more people, and get their goal.
In short, nearly the same effect upon the storyline could be had by players simply through not participating at all. Whooopeee. Aren't we excited?
It's also mildly irritating that we can't get a single word out of any of the factions save CONCORD, the Sansha, and the Fed. Despite the fact that no government in history has taken kindly to invasion and kidnapping of citizens, the level of concern being represented is along the lines of what one would expect from a poached egg.
Granted, I understand CCP doesn't have all the time in the world, and that they do have a storyline objective with incursions, but, come on, making a few posts and tossing a few bones isn't that hard.
As it is, we're being railroaded, hard.