MOSCOW: A car explosion injured pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin on Saturday and killed another person, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks Russia blamed on Ukraine.
Russian Investigative Committee, which probes grave crimes, said that today at about 11:00 am, an explosive device detonated in an Audi Q7 vehicle carrying Zakhar Prilepin.
The blast occurred amid a tense security situation. Authorities reported a string of drone attacks and sabotage attempts ahead of the popular 9 May celebrations of the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis.
No one claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, but Russia has usually blamed Ukraine or the West, rarely giving any evidence.
Russian authorities also claimed to have thwarted a drone strike on the Kremlin earlier this week.
Writer is famous novelist
Prilepin, one of Russia’s well-known novelists, is a nationalist and a vocal supporter of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, where he fought alongside pro-Kremlin separatists in 2014. The investigative committee said the famous writer was wounded and the driver died.
It published pictures of a partly destroyed, overturned vehicle and said the writer had been taken to a hospital. The explosion occurred in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow. Agency Interfax reported that according to a medical source, the author’s condition was considered “critical”. –AFP/APP
