Russia on Saturday accused the Western “godfathers” of Ukraine, and primarily the United States, of sharing responsibility for “terrorist attacks” committed on its soil according to it by Kiev, after the attack on explosive that seriously injured nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin and killed his driver.
Fierce support for the military offensive against Ukraine in which he claimed to be taking part, a successful writer translated to the West and then a champion of an ultra-nationalist line, Zakhar Prilepin was seriously injured in the explosion which practically destroyed his car Saturday near Nizhny Novgorod, Russia’s third largest city, 400 km east of Moscow.
This attack, which killed Prilepin’s driver and comrade in arms, comes as drone strikes, sabotage and alleged attacks have multiplied in recent weeks on Russian territory, without their perpetrators being clearly identified.
Last August, a similar explosion claimed the life of Daria Douguina, the daughter of ultranationalist ideologue Alexandre Douguine, herself a blogger and committed journalist. In April, an influential paramilitary blogger, Vladlen Tatarskii, was killed by an explosion in Saint Petersburg. And last Wednesday, the Kremlin, the heart of Russian power, was targeted by a mysterious drone attack.
“The responsibility for this terrorist attack like others rests not only with the Ukrainian authorities but also with their Western sponsors, first and foremost the United States,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. Russian diplomacy considered that the absence of condemnation from Washington was “revealing”, and that that of international organizations was “unacceptable”.
The writer is said to be in “serious” condition
The Ukrainian government has never acknowledged attacks on Russian territory, and the United States this week denounced a “lie” after being accused by Moscow of having ordered the mysterious drone attack on the Kremlin, committed a few days of the May 9 celebrations in Red Square of the 1945 Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, which also speaks of a “terrorist act”, the explosion of Zakhar Prilepin’s car occurred around 11:00 a.m. (8:00 a.m. GMT) in a locality in the Borsky district of the Nizhny region. Novgorod.
The Interfax agency, citing the medical rescue services, said the writer was in “serious” condition. “It was decided not to transfer him to Moscow and to operate on him in Nizhny Novgorod. His condition is considered serious,” the source said.
A photo from the scene of the incident, released by the Investigation Committee, shows what remains of a white vehicle with the front end shredded and overturned on its roof, past a crater on a dirt road, in a wooded area.
The Interior Ministry quickly announced the arrest of a suspect, born in 1993, in the same region.
Later, the Investigative Committee claimed that the suspect, named Alexander Permyakov, had “declared that he acted according to the instructions of the Ukrainian special services”.
The spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, immediately accused Ukraine, the United States, Great Britain and NATO of being behind this “terrorist” act. “Direct responsibility of the United States and Great Britain. We pray for Zakhar,” she wrote on Telegram.
A nationalist figure who supports the invasion of Ukraine
A well-known figure on the Russian literary scene, translated in many countries, this 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 personal 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”.
“I have no case of conscience in relation to what is happening. It happened, now we have to go all the way,” he said in an interview with the media Chita.ru 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).