Russian nationalist writer wounded in car bombing, driver killed

On Saturday, Russia blamed Ukraine and the West for a car explosion that wounded Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin and killed his driver.

The state Investigative Committee called the writer’s Audi Q7’s explosion in a settlement in Nizny Novgorod, 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Moscow, a terrorist attack. He was hospitalized.

An interior ministry spokesman said a suspect was arrested.

Since February 2022, three Russian pro-war figures have been bombed. Russia claims Ukraine killed the two prior targets, which Kyiv denies. Ukraine kept silent on the latest event.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova posted on Telegram: “The fact has come true: Washington and NATO fed another international terrorist cell – the Kyiv regime.”

She claimed it was “direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain” without evidence.

“We pray for Zakhar,” she stated.

TASS said that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment without investigators’ input.

The outlet stated former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sent a telegram to Prilepin calling the incident “a vile attack by Nazi extremists”.

Novelist Prilepin openly supports Russia’s 15-month invasion of Ukraine. He has 300,000 Telegram followers and a website and YouTube channel where he promotes nationalist views.

In a 2019 YouTube interview, he claimed that his military unit “killed people in big numbers” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region before Moscow’s full-scale invasion last year.

“These people are dead, buried, and there are many of them,” he stated. No Donetsk battalion achieved such results. We caused unbelievable chaos there. No field commander had my results.”

Saturday’s tragedy followed the murder of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in a St. Petersburg cafe last month. A vehicle bomb outside Moscow murdered Darya Dugina, daughter of a nationalist ideologue, last August.