06/05/2023 21:32 (act. 06/05/2023 21:40)
Prilepin’s driver was killed, the writer himself injured ©APA/Russian Investigative Committee
Russia blamed Ukraine for the car bomb attack on writer Zakhar Prilepin, who is close to the Kremlin, and called it a “terrorist attack”. Investigations have not yet been completed, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow announced late on Saturday. But it is already clear from the materials that the new terrorist attack “was organized and carried out by the Kiev regime and is supported by Western trustees”.
When asked by the internet newspaper Ukrajinska Pravda, a representative of the Ukrainian secret service SBU said that it “would neither confirm nor deny” involvement in such attacks.
Prilepin, 47, was seriously injured on Saturday morning when an explosive device attached to his car detonated. Your driver died. Prilepin is a staunch supporter of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. He fought there too.
Shortly after the explosion, which took place in the Russian region of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, police arrested a man born in 1993 as a suspect. Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin announced that Prilepin had been operated on. He suffered several broken bones.
Prilepin held various positions before becoming a member of the OMON police unit. He participated in operations in Chechnya in 1996 and 1999. During that time he joined the National Bolsheviks, which have been banned as an unconstitutional organization since 2005.
Prilepin now lives with his wife, two sons and two daughters in Donetsk, in Ukraine’s partly Russian-occupied Donbass region. It has been on an EU sanctions list since February 2022.
It wouldn’t be the first time that a supporter of the war in Russia has been the target of an assassination: just a few weeks ago, prominent military blogger Vladlen Tatarski died in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Last August, Darja Dugina – daughter of right-wing nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin – died near Moscow as a result of a car bomb detonation.
A Ukrainian movement called Atesh took to social media and indicated it was behind the attack on Prilepin. The group, which describes itself as a partisan movement of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, has claimed credit for several attacks in Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories in recent months. “The Atesh movement has been behind Prilepin since the beginning of the year”, says the text. And again: “We had a feeling that sooner or later he would explode.” The credibility of the message could not be initially verified.