Cancer patient outside Moscow kills himself with a homemade bomb

A cancer patient killed himself with a homemade explosive device outside Moscow yesterday. He detonated the bomb in his apartment around midnight on August 15. The explosion caused no significant damage to the apartment building. 

According to reports, the man in question was a 62-year-old ex-convict. His 81-year-old mother was in the apartment with him at the time of the explosion, but she sustained no injuries.

Since 2014, Russia’s problems with providing painkillers to terminally ill cancer patients have attracted public outrage, after a string of cancer patients started killing themselves to end their own suffering. The suicides included Rear Admiral Vyacheslav Apanasenko, who killed himself, his family says, when his wife was unable to obtain a doctor’s prescription for painkillers.