Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, a staunch supporter of the Kremlin attack in Ukraine, was seriously injured in his car’s explosion in Russia on Saturday, an attack Moscow blames on Ukraine and the West.
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This explosion, which killed the author’s driver, practically destroyed the vehicle and left a large crater in its wake, occurred as drone strikes, acts of sabotage and suspected attacks on Russian territory have multiplied in recent weeks, without their perpetrators being positively identified.
The Kremlin blames Ukraine, which denies this, as a major offensive by Ukrainian forces and great celebrations in Russia on May 9, the day of the victory over Hitler, loom large.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, a drone attack hit a building in the Kremlin, the heart of Russian power. Kyiv denied any involvement.
“One person was killed by the blast and writer Zakhar Prilepin, who was in the car, was injured,” said the Interior Ministry, which later claimed that a suspect born in 1993 and with a criminal record had been arrested in the Nizhny Novgorod region (mid-west ) where the facts took place.
The Interfax agency, citing emergency medical services, said the writer’s condition was “serious”. “It was decided not to transfer him to Moscow and to operate on him in Nizhny Novgorod. His condition is considered serious,” the source said.
The region’s governor had previously claimed Zakhar Prilepin suffered “minor fractures” and was not in mortal danger.
Russian diplomatic spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine, the United States, Britain and NATO of being behind the “terrorist” act. “Direct responsibility of the United States and Great Britain. We pray for Zakhar,” she wrote on Telegram.
According to the investigative committee, which speaks of an “act of terrorism,” the writer was “with his family” in his car when the explosion happened around 11:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. GMT) in a town in the Borsky district.
A photo released by the investigative committee from the scene of the incident shows the remains of a white vehicle, its front end shredded and overturned on its roof, past a crater on a dirt road in a wooded area.
The 47-year-old writer, a well-known figure on the Russian literary scene, translated to several countries, campaigned for the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, with whom he fought.
Since then he has regularly traveled to eastern Ukraine and defended President Vladimir Putin and his massive offensive against Kiev launched on February 24, 2022.
Author of novels and short stories inspired by his personal experience, especially in war zones, he actively participated in patriotic and traditionalist movements in Russia.
Under European sanctions since the end of February 2022, last year he participated in a parliamentary group responsible for flushing out actors in the cultural world in Russia with “anti-Russian positions”.
“Russia is turning into Donbass (a region in eastern Ukraine). Many people want to destroy it. […] I have no conscience as to what is happening. It happened, now we have to go all the way,” he said in an interview with the media Chita.ru last November.
Before joining Vladimir Putin’s regime, this 1990s veteran of the Chechen wars had fought for a time in opposition within the national-Bolshevik party of the sulfurous writer Edouard Limonov (1943-2020).
Zakhar Prilepin is not the first figure in Russia’s pro-war movement to come under attack.
Last August, Daria Dougina, the daughter of ultra-nationalist ideologue Alexandre Douguine, herself a blogger and a committed journalist, died in the Moscow region when the car she was traveling in exploded.
In early April, an influential paramilitary blogger, Vladlen Tatarskii, cantor of the offensive in Ukraine, was killed in the explosion of a statuette wedged in a cafe in central Saint Petersburg.