The prominent Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, one of the most fervent supporters of Russian military intervention against Ukraine, was wounded this Saturday in a car bomb attack. Russia has already blamed the attack on Ukraine and the West.
The car in which the writer was traveling, an Audi Q7, exploded near the city of Nizhny Novgorod (Volga). “At the moment it has not been established exactly what happened,” his spokeswoman told the Russian press. “But Zajar Prilepin is fine,” he assured.
A source close to the Ministry of the Interior assured that, according to the first information, Prilepin had serious injuries that affected his legs. After the explosion he was conscious and was admitted to a nearby hospital, he reports on the RBK newspaper website.
The explosive device could have been planted under the car while Prilepin was in a cafeteria.
According to the Telegram channels Baza and Mash, the driver of the car died in the attack.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reacted to the attack through its spokesperson, Maria Zajárova. In a message on Telegram, she wrote: “The fact has come true: Washington and NATO feed another international terrorist cell: the Kyiv regime.”
Although she did not provide any evidence to support the accusation, Zajárova assured that the attack is “a direct responsibility of the US and the United Kingdom.” “We pray for Zajar,” she said.
The attack is reminiscent of the one that ended in August last year with the life of Daria Duguina, daughter of the philosopher and political scientist Alexander Duguin, whose ideas have influenced those around the Kremlin. An explosive device went off in her car as she was returning from a traditionalist festival in the Moscow province that they had both attended. Alexander Dugin was going to return with her daughter in the same car, but he changed his mind and took another vehicle, leaving her the one he usually drove. That is why it is believed that the real objective of the attack was him.
Last month, military blogger Vladlen Tatarski (a pseudonym for Maxim Fomin) was assassinated in a St. Petersburg cafeteria with a bomb concealed in a statuette given to him as a gift.
Zajar Prilepin, 47, is the author of popular Russian bestsellers such as Sankya (2006), an autobiography about the Chechen war, and Sin (2007), an award-winning novel.
His literary career has always gone hand in hand with his political activism. Between 2016 and 2018 he fought in the Donbass conflict. The nationalist was then an adviser to the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zajárchenko, assassinated in 2018, who granted him the rank of commander.
This year it has also joined the Russian National Guard to fight in Ukraine. According to the Tass agency, a week before his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod he was in Donbass.
Since the 1990s he has been a member of the National-Bolshevik Party, a formation founded by fellow writer Eduard Limónov (1943-2020) and whose first members included Duguin, although he later abandoned it. The party was outlawed as extremist in 2007.
In 2020 Prilepin created the ultranationalist political party For the Truth, which in 2021 merged with Just Russia, a formation of Russia’s “systemic opposition”, that is, loyal to the Kremlin.