Evening Medusa

April 24. A St. Petersburg oncologist started a blog about how he is being treated for cancer.

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In Toronto, 25-year-old student Alec Minassian hit passers-by on the street while driving a van. 10 people were killed and another 15 were injured. Minassian was detained - it is believed that he acted intentionally, and charges have already been brought against him. Nothing is known yet about Minassian's motives; at the time of his arrest, he asked the police to shoot him in the head.

The Moscow City Hallrefused to approve Alexei Navalny’s rally on May 5, which he (still) intends to hold on Tverskaya Street. The action is timed to coincide with the fourth inauguration of President Vladimir Putin, which will take place in two days, and is called “He is not our king.”

A quarter of VTsIOM survey participants considered it important to maintain access to Telegram in Russia. 64% of respondents reported that it did not matter to them.

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day

Today, April 24, is the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire. We prepared cards about the search for relatives who died or disappeared during these events, and published fragments of the memoirs of Harutyun Naroyan , a native of the village of Arderd (now southeastern Turkey), who in 1915, at the age of 10, lost most of his family during persecution of Armenians. The text of the memoirs was translated into Russian by journalist Diana Manucharyan.

“I was already standing in one of the columns, driven by the Turks, when Khzrbek quietly called out to me. We used to play together before. Khzrbek offered to take refuge in his house; Khzrbek was a Turk. “Go and don’t look back,” my mother whispered, overhearing the conversation. She took gold coins from her bun of pinned hair, fell to her knees and handed them to the Turk. He took them. Without getting to her feet, she pushed us in the back with all her might. We started to run away, I grabbed [my younger brother] Avetis by the hand and dragged him along. I constantly looked around, but apart from [cousin] Andranik, who was following us, I didn’t see anyone. I lost sight of Hovhannes and my mother. As it turns out later, forever.”

“Why me and why so early”

St. Petersburg oncologist Andrei Pavlenko suffers from cancer. He learned about it in March and decided to document the entire treatment process by recording podcasts and filming a video blog to make information about the disease more accessible to others. Meduza correspondent Irina Kravtsova interviewed him :

“I won’t lie - I asked myself why me and why so early. But there are no answers to these questions. Cancer is just a given, a fact that exists, and there is nothing I can do about it. During the entire time that I have been fighting cancer as a doctor, about two thousand patients have passed through me. Was it fair that this happened to them? Of course not. Would it be better if some terrible terrorist got cancer instead? Maybe. But the whole point is that cancer does not choose its victims, it simply appears in the body - and you need to somehow live with it. Self-digging is a false path; it will only steal grains of time. It’s better to accept the situation quickly and act.”

What else

The board game CIA: Collect it all has gone on sale - and it looks like one of the real games that CIA agents play in training. Unfortunately, the content of the real game is partially classified, so the creators of the public version had to replace some of the cards.

An exhibition of notes written to Vladimir Mayakovsky by visitors to his performances has opened in the Moscow gallery “On Shabolovka”. They are very similar to today’s comments on social networks: “What class were you traveling in and who threw up on you”; “Are all poets in love with themselves like you are, you look at the “sun” and nail it”; “Have you ever seen another impudent person like you?”

We have a new game about Dmitry Peskov . Sometimes the press secretary of the Russian president has to compare different events and phenomena - similar and not very similar, and do this in accordance with the political position of the Kremlin. Try to guess how Peskov compared the change of power in Kyiv and Yerevan, Brexit and the collapse of the USSR, blocking in Russia and Ukraine.

💼 Newsletter sponsor

Today's Evening Medusa is sponsored by Colgate and a new series of Ancient Secrets toothpastes with traditional Chinese medicine ingredients. Together with Colgate, we put together an interesting test about how people cared for their teeth in different eras - Ancient Egypt, medieval Europe, 19th century America, and much more. Some facts will definitely surprise you!

Victor Davydov