It’s been a hot minute since we saw any good moments of vehicular mayhem from Russia, but this new video of a truck sliding into the water comes as a sweet return to form for our friends in the former U.S.S.R. Not just because it involves all the hallmarks of a great Russian viral video—antiquated technology, unimpressed onlookers, dreary lighting—but because it happens oh-so-sloooooowly.
As is usually the case with videos such as this one, posted to a YouTube account named “Oleg Makarov,” everything seems fine at the beginning of the clip. A tractor-trailer laden with steel pipes is attempting to back down a muddy slope to a waiting barge moored against the banks of some large body of water—something in our gut says it’s a river, but we don’t know for sure. It takes the truck driver a couple tries, but he finally manages to to steer the trailer’s rear wheels onto the barge…and that’s when things go wrong.
It’s hard to tell exactly what happens, but as the rear wheels of the trailer reach the barge, they appear to lock up, even as the front end of the truck continues to push downwards towards the slope. With the rear of the trailer unable to move, the force of the truck’s momentum seems to be transferred to the barge—and since nobody on the barge apparently remembered to set the parking brake, it begins moving off the bank.
The driver, quickly realizing things have progressed beyond the point where he can do anything, bails out just before the cab hits the water. But it takes a few more long moments for it to slip beneath the muddy Russian waters, with only a few pieces of floating debris to mark its aquatic grave. All while the people surrounding the scene watch with bemused detachment.
Never change, Russia. Never change.