Pro-Kremlin writer injured in car blast, another killed: ministry

MOSCOW: A prominent pro-Kremlin writer and Russian nationalist was injured Saturday in a car “explosion” and one other person was killed, the interior ministry said, after a string of recent drone attacks in Russia amid the fighting in Ukraine.

“According to initial reports, one person was killed by the explosion, and the writer Zakhar Prilepin, who was in the car, was injured” in the Nizhny Novgorod region some 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of Moscow, the ministry said.

The Russian Investigative Committee, which probes serious crimes, said Prilepin was “travelling with his family” at the time of the blast.

Russian state-run agencies cited sources in the emergency service saying the writer suffered injuries on his legs.

The 47-year-old writer, one of Russia’s best-known novelists, joined pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine in 2014, and fought by their side.

A Chechnya war veteran, he has regularly gone to eastern Ukraine and is a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of his February 2022 offensive.

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

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.