Car blast wounds pro-Kremlin writer, one killed

MOSCOW: A car explosion wounded pro-Kremlin nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin on Saturday and killed one other person, authorities said, the latest in a string of attacks that Russia has blamed on Ukraine.

The blast comes on the heels of alleged drone strikes and sabotage attempts in Russia, which is gearing up for the popular May 9 celebrations of the Soviet victory over the Nazis.

In the most spectacular of the incidents, Russian authorities claim to have thwarted a drone attack on the Kremlin earlier this week.

“Today at about 11:00 am (0800 GMT)… an explosive device detonated in an Audi Q7 car carrying Zakhar Prilepin,” the Russian Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said.

The explosion took place in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow, where the writer is from.

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Prilepin, one of Russia’s best-known novelists, is a vocal supporter of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, where he fought alongside pro-Russian separatists in 2014.

“The famous writer was injured, and the person driving died,” the investigative committee said.

It published images of a partly destroyed, overturned car and said the writer had been taken to a medical facility.

The committee opened an investigation for terrorism after the attack, and the interior ministry said it detained a man who “may be involved” in the explosion.

Shortly after the blast, and without providing evidence, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine and the West.

“Washington and NATO fed another international terrorist cell – the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova said on Telegram.

She said the blast was the “direct responsibility of the United States and Britain.”

Russian state-run news agency TASS and RIA Novosti quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying he was waiting for information from law enforcement services before commenting.

Nationalist writer

Prilepin is acclaimed for novels drawing on his experiences of serving with Russian forces in Chechnya and as a member of a banned radical nationalist group.

The shaven-headed writer has been a frequent visitor to pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine following the start of the conflict in April 2014.

After the beginning of the 2022 offensive, he was part of a group of pro-Kremlin figures that launched what they dubbed a fight against the “anti-state position” of Russia’s cultural elite.

They demanded the resignation of some cultural figures over what they said were unpatriotic positions.

The incident comes after a series of apparent attacks and sabotage on Russian territory, sometimes far from the front.

Russia claims that the United States masterminded the alleged attack on the Kremlin and that Ukraine carried it out overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday with two drones, aiming to kill President Vladimir Putin – both denied the charges.

On Thursday, a drone was shot down near an airbase in Sevastopol in the Crimean peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

The same day, Russia’s southern Krasnodar and Rostov regions, both near Ukraine, reported drone strikes that caused fires. On Friday, another fire broke out at the same place in Krasnodar, an oil refinery.

In April, a blast from a statuette rigged with explosives killed 40-year-old pro-Kremlin military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky.

And last August Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultranationalist intellectual, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Kyiv denied the charges.