Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, a staunch supporter of the Kremlin attack on Ukraine, was injured in his car "explosion" in Russia on Saturday, an attack Moscow blames on Ukraine and the West.
This incident, which killed the writer's driver, comes as drone strikes, sabotage and alleged attacks have multiplied in recent weeks on Russian territory, without their perpetrators being clearly identified.
Russian investigators said on Saturday that the suspect arrested after the explosion had "acted on the instructions" of Ukrainian agents.
"Investigators of the Investigative Committee are examining the involvement of Alexander Permyakov in the assassination attempt against Zakhar Prilepin," the committee said, adding that "during the interrogation, he stated that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services".
The explosion comes as a major offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces and the great celebrations in Russia of May 9, the day of victory over Hitler, are looming.
On Tuesday, an alleged drone attack notably hit a building in the Kremlin, the heart of Russian power. kyiv has denied any involvement.
"One person was killed by the blast and the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who was in the car, was injured," the Interior Ministry said, later claiming that a man "who might be related to the explosion" had been arrested in the region of Nizhny Novgorod (Central-West), where the facts took place.
Anonymous medical and security sources, quoted by Russian news agencies, claim that the writer was injured in the legs.
"Zakhar (Prilepin) has minor fractures, there is no danger to his life," Gleb Nikitin, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, assured on Telegram.
Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine, the United States, Britain and NATO of being behind the "terrorist" act. "Direct responsibility of the United States and Great Britain." We pray for Zakhar,” she wrote on Telegram.
According to the investigative committee, which speaks of a "terrorist act", the writer was in his car "with his family" when the explosion occurred around 11 a.m. in a locality in the Borski district.
A photo from the scene, released by the Investigation Committee, shows a white vehicle with the front end shredded and overturned on its roof, past a crater on a dirt road in a wooded area.
A well-known figure on the Russian literary scene, translated in several countries, the 47-year-old writer committed himself in 2014 to the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, alongside whom he fought.
Since then, he has traveled regularly to eastern Ukraine and defended President Vladimir Putin and his massive offensive against kyiv, launched on February 24, 2022.
Author of novels and short stories inspired by his experience, particularly in war zones, he actively participated in patriotic and traditionalist movements in Russia.
Under European sanctions since the end of February 2022, he had participated last year in a parliamentary group responsible for flushing out actors in the cultural world in Russia with "anti-Russian positions".
“Russia is turning into Donbass (region in eastern Ukraine). A lot of people want to destroy it […] I have no conscience about what is happening. It happened, now we have to go all the way,” he said in an interview with Chita.ru media last November.
Before joining the regime of Vladimir Putin, this veteran of the Chechen wars in the 1990s had campaigned for a time in the opposition within the National Bolshevik Party of the sulphurous writer Edouard Limonov (1943-2020).
Zakhar Prilepin is not the first figure of the Russian pro-war movement to be targeted by an attack. But he is luckier than others.
At the beginning of April, an influential military blogger, Vladlen Tatarskii (real name Maxime Fomine), supporter of the offensive in Ukraine, was killed in the explosion of a statuette trapped in a cafe in the center of Saint Petersburg.
And, at the end of last August, Daria Dougina, the daughter of the imperialist ideologue Alexandre Douguine, died in the explosion of a car in the Moscow region.
