Russia’s top investigative agency said Saturday that the suspect in a car bombing that injured a prominent pro-Kremlin novelist and killed his driver has admitted to acting on the orders of Ukraine’s special services.
The explosion in the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a prominent nationalist writer and staunch supporter of Russian aggression in Ukraine, was the third explosion involving prominent pro-Kremlin figures since the start of the conflict.
It took place in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 250 miles east of Moscow. Prilepin was hospitalized with broken bones, lungs and other injuries; The regional governor said he was placed in a “medical sleep”, but did not elaborate.
Russian Investigative Committee via AP
Russia’s Investigative Committee said the suspect was a resident of Ukraine and admitted under questioning that he was acting on Ukrainian orders.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs blamed not only Ukraine, but also the United States.
“The responsibility for these and other terrorist acts lies not only with the Ukrainian authorities, but with their Western sponsors, first of all, the United States, who have nurtured anti-Russian neo-Nazi projects in Ukraine since the February 2014 coup,” the ministry said, referring to the 2014 uprising in Kiev. Referring to the words that forced the Russia-friendly president to flee.
In August 2022, a car bomb attack on the outskirts of Moscow Daria killed Dugina, the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist is often referred to as “Putin’s brain.” Authorities alleged that Ukraine was behind the blasts.
last month, An explosion in a cafe Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, was killed in St. Petersburg. Officials again blamed Ukraine’s intelligence agencies.
Prilepin was returning to Moscow from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions on Saturday and stopped in the Nizhny Novgorod region for food, Russian news agency RBC reported, citing unnamed sources.
Prilepin became a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin after Putin illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. He was involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine on behalf of Russian-backed separatists. Last year, the European Union sanctioned him for supporting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In 2020, he founded a political party, For the Truth, which Russian media reported was supported by the Kremlin. A year later, Prilepin’s party merged with the nationalist A Just Russia party which has seats in parliament.
A vice-president of the newly formed party, Prilepin won a seat in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, in the 2021 election, but gave it up.
Party leader Sergei Mironov called Saturday’s incident a “terrorist act” and blamed Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed Mironov’s sentiments in a post on the messaging app Telegram, adding that responsibility also lies with the United States and NATO.
“Washington and NATO nurtured another international terrorist cell – the Kiev government,” Zakharova wrote. “The United States and Britain are directly responsible. We are praying for Zakhar.”
Former President Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, blamed “Nazi extremists” in a telegram sent to Prilepin.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the allegations. However, Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podoliak, pointed the finger at the Kremlin in a tweet on Saturday, saying that “to prolong the agony of the Putin dynasty and maintain the illusory ‘total control,’ the Russians have lifted the repression machine.” gives
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