Pro-war Russian novelist injured in car explosion
TALLINN, ESTONIA
Russia’s top investigative agency on Saturday said the suspect in a car bombing that injured a prominent pro-Kremlin novelist and killed his driver has admitted acting at the behest of Ukraine’s special services.
The blast that hit the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a wellknown nationalist writer and an ardent supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine, was the third explosion involving prominent proKremlin figures since the start of the conflict.
It took place in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, about 250 miles east of Moscow. Prilepin was hospitalized with broken bones, brusied lungs and other injuries; the regional governor daid he had been put into a “medical sleep,” but did not elaborate.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the suspect was a Ukrainian native and had admitted under questioning that he was working under orders from Ukraine.
The Foreign Ministry in turn blamed not only Ukraine but the U.S., too.
“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with the Ukrainian authorities, but with their Western patrons, in the first place, the United States, who since the coup d’etat of February 2014 have painstakingly nurtured the anti-Russian neo-Nazi project in Ukraine,” the ministry said, referring to the 2014 uprising in Kyiv that forced the
Russia-friendly president to flee.
In August 2022, a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist often referred to as “Putin’s brain.” The authorities alleged that Ukraine was responsible.
Last month, an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg killed a popular military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky. Officials once again blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies.
Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that Prilepin was traveling back to Moscow from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and stopped in the Nizhny Novogorod region to eat.
Prilepin became a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014, after Putin illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula. He was involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine on the side of Russian-backed separatists. Last year, he was sanctioned by the European Union for his support of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In 2020, he founded a political party, For the Truth, which Russian media reported was backed by the Kremlin.
Party leader Sergei Mironov called the incident on Saturday “a terrorist act.”
“Washington and NATO have nursed yet another international terrorist cell — the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova wrote. “Direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain.’’