Pop Goes the Weasel (Or the New Counter-artillery Radar)

Russia's army has added a fourth ring to its three-ring circus

Courtesy of Forbes

Whoops-a-daisy! The state-run media — meaning 95 percent of all media in Russia today — ran a report two days ago about the latest high-tech counter-artillery battery that was set to arrive in Ukraine to aid Russia’s “heroes.”

“The effective performance of combat missions by missilemen and artillerymen, together with the use of unmanned aircraft, which increases the efficiency of artillery fire and survivability on the battlefield, is also ensured through the use of modern artillery reconnaissance equipment,” the Kremlin boasted in the hours before Ukraine blew up that rare Yastreb-AV (The Ukrainians Blew It Up).

A few hours after it arrived at its position, the vehicle you see in the image above, called the Hawk or Yastreb, was no more. The beautiful irony is that the Hawk was sent to Ukraine to protect Russian invaders from the U.S.-supplied HIMARS. Artillery fired by a HIMARS is what took out the radar battery. This is like a town switching to LED lights only to experience a blackout when it throws the switch — or something like that.

Whatever the simile or metaphor, it’s deliciously ironic, bordering on the hysterical! I love watching the “greatest nation” stumble effortlessly over its poorly sewn boots. When such incidents occur, it reminds me — and I hope you — that Russia is an eternal farce whose successes in pretty much anything usually involve cheating, stealing, or oppression of the vulnerable and desperate. It reminds me that goodness will always overcome evil and that the West will always prevail over the most diabolical creations to come out of the Kremlin’s maze of corridors. 

Of course, Russia is a formidable force in the world. Still, her inherent inability to be a reasonable and rational actor and colleague among nations ensures that the country always finds itself isolated, abandoned, and looking from the outside in. 

Putin is a loser. He is an utter failure. He led a relatively prosperous nation with a dynamic growth trend that had, in 30 years, become a popular destination for world travelers — it would have been more popular. Still, the Kremlin insisted on ridiculous and ever-changing visas to gain access to the country, even for a few days. Russia was a modern country in most regards, and if you lived in the major cities, it was mostly first-world. Despite microeconomic resilience to the sanctions, Russia’s long-term outlook is bleak, with negative technological growth on the horizon. The country suffers a severe demographic crisis, and the 2023 brain drain will continue in 2024. Vladimir Putin’s fascism ushered in all of this.

Realizing that he, well, “f***** up” by invading Ukraine, he is now forced to turn up the volume on the rhetoric and propaganda. He needs to blame not “little old Ukraine” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russian men but the United States and NATO. He needs to turn a war that no one needed or ordered into an existential moment for the Russian misinformed, even ignorant bumpkins, who are either too poor to revolt, too young to know better, or too scared to try. Anyone with enough sense, intelligence, or energy to fight back is either dead, in prison, or has left, and Putin knows this.

This is why we can expect the rings to be added to Putin’s circus. With each passing month, as the technological and intellectual stagnation deepens, we have more fun moments like the proud announcement of “new, high-tech radar systems,” which get blown up within hours after going online.

Oh, boy, it’s gonna be fun, folks! Pop popcorn, chill some beers, and kick back in the La-Z-Boy.