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, according to Russia’s top investigative agency on Saturday.
The explosion in the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a well-known nationalist writer and staunch supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was the third involving prominent pro-Kremlin figures since the conflict began.
It took place in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 250 miles east of Moscow. Prilepin was hospitalized with broken bones, bruised lungs, and other injuries; the regional governor stated that he had been placed in a “medical sleep,” but provided no further details.
According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, the suspect is a Ukrainian native who admitted under questioning that he was acting on orders from Ukraine.
In turn, the Foreign Ministry blamed not only Ukraine but also the United States.
“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with the Ukrainian authorities but with their Western patrons, most notably the United States, who have painstakingly nurtured the anti-Russian neo-Nazi project in Ukraine since the February 2014 coup d’etat,” the ministry said, referring to the 2014 uprising in Kyiv that forced the Russia-friendly president to flee.
A car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow in August 2022 killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist known as “Putin’s brain.” The authorities claimed that Ukraine was responsible for the explosion.
Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, was killed in a cafe explosion in St. Petersburg last month. Officials blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies once more.
According to unnamed sources, Prilepin was returning to Moscow from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Saturday and stopped in the Nizhny Novgorod region for a meal.
After Putin illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Prilepin became a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was a participant in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, siding with Russian-backed separatists. The European Union sanctioned him last year for his support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In 2020, he founded the For the Truth political party, which Russian media reported was backed by the Kremlin. Prilepin’s party merged with the nationalist A Just Russia party, which has seats in parliament, a year later.
Prilepin, a co-chair of the newly formed party, won a seat in Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, in the 2021 election but resigned.
On Saturday, party leader Sergei Mironov called the incident “a terrorist act” and blamed Ukraine. In a post on the messaging app Telegram, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed Mironov’s sentiment, adding that responsibility also lay with the US and NATO.
“Washington and NATO have nursed yet another international terrorist cell — the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova wrote. “The United States and the United Kingdom bear direct responsibility.” We’re hoping for the best for Zakhar.”
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, blamed “Nazi extremists” in a telegram to Prilepin.
Officials in Ukraine have not responded directly to the allegations. Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukraine’s presidential adviser, appeared to point the finger at the Kremlin in a tweet on Saturday, saying that “to prolong the agony of Putin’s clan and maintain the illusionary ‘total control,’ the Russian repression machine picks up the pace and catches up with everyone,” including supporters of the Ukraine war.
