Evening Medusa

We tell the story of a schoolboy from Perm who set up a drug lab in his apartment. Why is there a lockdown in Austria again with 65% of those vaccinated. How do migrants stuck in Minsk live?

Good evening,

THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) IS CREATED AND (OR) DISTRIBUTED BY A FOREIGN MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT AND (OR) A RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A FOREIGN AGENT

This is Meduza's daily newsletter about the main events of the day. Today's issue begins with nostalgia for the nineties. More precisely, according to the program “Call Kuza”. In short, Russian video bloggers managed to revive it with the help of modern technology - and they even got together to broadcast it on Friday. And you can call there!

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Pulse

The main thing for the day - point by point

• The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin , said that "blogger Morgenstern sells drugs on social networks." Morgenstern's lawyer replied that Bastrykin's statement "caused, to put it mildly, bewilderment."
• Vladimir Putin said that he was revaccinated twice . First with Sputnik Light, and then with a nasal vaccine.
• Bills on mandatory QR codes were not included in the State Duma's preliminary work plan for December.
• Mikhail Efremov's film based on the novel "Crime and Punishment" won a prize at the contest of videos of prisoners. His daughter played Sonya Marmeladova.
• Alexei Navalny filed a fourth lawsuit against the leadership of the colony in Pokrov.
• The former head of Navalny's headquarters * in St. Petersburg, Irina Fatyanova, left Russia .
• NASA and SpaceX have launched a probe that will crash into an asteroid. This is a test to protect the Earth from dangerous space objects.
• Grammy nominees announced . Justin Bieber has eight nominations, Billie Eilish has seven.

* The activities of the public movement "Headquarters of Navalny" were terminated by a court decision.

Texts of the day

Meduza tells the story of a schoolboy from Perm who set up a drug lab in an ordinary apartment

In January 2021, Permian police detained a 16-year-old schoolboy and his "twin assistants": according to the security forces, they were selling illegal substances. A police press release claimed that the teenager, apart from his parents, rented an apartment in an ordinary apartment building in order to "grow strawberries there", but eventually equipped it with a drug laboratory. The news noted that the detainee studied diligently and was an excellent student in biology. His relatives and teachers said that he was interested in science; no one could have guessed anything wrong. Meduza special correspondent Irina Kravtsova traveled to Perm to find out how things really were. The result was a poignant text about blind motherly love, poverty and loneliness . But not only: there are more dizzying turns in this material than you might think.

Thousands of migrants from Africa and the Middle East are stuck in Minsk. Meduza talked to them about how they live now and whether they still hope to get to the European Union

Thousands of refugees from Africa and the Middle East still remain in Belarus. Some of them tried several times to break through the border, but to no avail. Many have already despaired of getting into the EU and have decided to return to their homeland, as they see no other way out. We talked to them about what made them leave their countries, why they want to get to Europe and what they will do next. “We are not poor people. We have money, business. I have a big company in Syria, I am a businessman. I have a Porsche Cayenne, but there is no future,” one of Meduza’s interlocutors shared.

Podcast "What Happened"

Nazarbayev ceded another important post to his successor. It turns out that in Kazakhstan, despite authoritarianism, there is a successful transit of power?

Former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has stepped down as leader of the ruling party, which he led for 22 years. Now this post should go to the current president of the country, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The transfer of a party post is the next stage in the transit of power, which began back in 2019. What has changed in Kazakhstan in two years? And what will most likely be the course of the country after the final retirement of the Leader of the Nation? We are talking with political scientist Dosym Satpaev.

Listen to What Happened on Meduza and YouTube , and subscribe to Apple Podcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Yandex.Music and other podcast services.

The coronavirus

Why was a new lockdown introduced in Austria with such a large number of people vaccinated by Russian standards?

For reference: in Austria, 65% of the population was vaccinated. Despite this, the authorities have already returned a total quarantine for both the unvaccinated and those who have been vaccinated. This caused mass protests on the eve of its start. Why is a new quarantine needed? There is a simple answer: the idea that vaccinating two-thirds of the population is enough to defeat the epidemic is outdated. It could seem true in the summer of 2020, when variants of the virus close to the “original” that appeared in late 2019 in China were spreading around the world. But it doesn't work with Delta .

Doctors wrote an open letter to Zyuganov, Shukshina, Beroev and “other opponents of vaccination” and called them to the red zones of hospitals

The open letter was signed by doctors from 11 major Russian hospitals treating people from COVID-19, including Denis Protsenko, chief physician of the covid hospital in Kommunarka. “We will take the time to guide you through the red zones, intensive care units and pathology departments of our hospitals. Maybe after that you will change your position and fewer people will die, ”the appeal says. Some recipients of the letter (for example, Maria Shukshina, Yuri Loza and Konstantin Kinchev) responded to the doctors. Here's what they say .

Other news about coronavirus:

• Roszdravnadzor began to look for opponents of vaccination and transfer their data to the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor's office .
• in Russia . has been registered The Sputnik M vaccine for teenagers
• The UK opened a criminal case after a 90-year-old pensioner operated on herself without waiting for the help of doctors.

word of the year

Yes, one more

It was chosen by the compilers of the Collins English Dictionary, and their choice surprisingly has nothing to do with the pandemic. The word of the year was called NFT - "non-fungible token". If you managed to forget what kind of technology this is, read our March text . Short answer: NFTs are used to trade digital works of art. And even tweets with jokes. Funny or not - that's up to you.

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