Russian investigators on Monday charged a man suspected of carrying out a car bombing that injured Zakhar Prilepin, a Russian writer who supports the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Writer Zakhar Prilepin, an ardent supporter of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, had both legs broken in Saturday’s attack. His assistant, who was in the car with him, died.
Oleksandr Permyakov is accused of committing a “terrorist act” and illegal handling of explosives, the General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The court of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, remanded him in custody for two months.
The Russian Foreign Ministry blamed Ukraine and the Western powers that support it, especially the United States, for the attack on Prilepin.
Kyiv denies its involvement in the attack
The special services of Ukraine neither confirmed nor denied their involvement. Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, believes that the attack was organized by the Russian authorities.
The US State Department did not comment on the incident.
The Russian state news agency TASS, citing sources in the security services, reported that the suspect was “born in Ukraine” and had a previous conviction for violent robbery.
Prilepin was the third pro-war figure to be the target of a bomb attack since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia also blamed Ukraine for the deaths of journalist Daria Dugina and military blogger Vladen Tatarsky in two previous attacks. Kyiv denies its involvement.
Zakhar Prilepin, a Russian writer who supports the invasion of Ukraine and was injured when his car exploded in Russia on Saturday, said in a statement on Sunday that he “will not be intimidated”, AFP reported.
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Who is Zakhar Prilepin and his connection with Ukraine
A personality of the Russian literary scene, translated in many countries, Zakhar Prilepin has been working with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, in whose ranks he fought, since 2014, writes AFP.
In addition, according to the EFE agency, in 2016, Prilepin moved to Donbas with his family, where he even became the commander of a special purpose battalion created on his initiative, which fought against the Ukrainian army.
He became an adviser to Oleksandr Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed DPR, who was killed in 2018, and who awarded him the rank of major.
Prilepin, who also fought in Chechnya and Dagestan in the 1990s, was the leader of the ultra-nationalist party For Truth, which he created in 2020, which merged with the Just Russia formation in 2021.
The writer was also a member of the banned National Bolshevik Party. Later, he supported the extra-parliamentary opposition, which demanded the resignation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, after Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea to Putin in March 2014, Prilepin publicly stated that he would no longer criticize the Kremlin leader.
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Source: Hot News
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