Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that Ukraine and Western countries it supports were responsible for a car bomb that wounded Russian writer Zakhar Prilebin and killed his driver.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that "responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with Ukraine, but also with its Western sponsors, led by the United States."

"Washington's reluctance to condemn after another terrorist attack (..) speaks for himself," she said, noting that "the silence of the international organizations concerned is unacceptable."

Earlier, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that "one person was killed in the explosion and writer Zakhar Prilepin, who was in the car, was injured." It later confirmed the arrest of a suspect born in 1993 with a criminal record in the Nizhny Novgorod region where the attack took place.

Russian investigators said on Saturday evening that the arrested suspect had "acted on instructions" from Ukraine's security services.

The investigative committee said in a statement that suspect Alexander Bermyakov "said during his interrogation that he acted on the instructions of the Ukrainian special services."

The blast occurred at a time when Russia is being hit by an increasing number of drone strikes, sabotage and attacks, but it is not clear who is responsible.

Russia's Investigative Committee said the author's private car exploded in a village in the Nizhny Novgorod region, about 400 km east of Moscow, and that the incident was being treated as an act of terrorism. It added that Prileben had been taken to a hospital.

The commission released a photo showing the white car upside down on a road next to farmland, with a deep crater next to it and metal fragments strewn nearby.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram: "The truth has become a reality: Washington and NATO have fed another international terrorist cell, the regime in Kiev."

It said it was "directly the responsibility of the United States and Britain", but did not provide evidence to support the accusation.

Officials at the White House and the U.S. Department of Defense and State did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Britain's Foreign Office was not immediately available for comment.

Prilepin, a novelist known for his pro-Russian war in Ukraine who also boasted of taking part in a military battle there, became the third prominent pro-war figure to be targeted by a bombing since Moscow's large-scale invasion of its neighbor on February 24, 2022.

In early April, pro-war military blogger Fomen, whose real name is Vladelin Tatarsky, was killed in a booby-trapped statue explosion in a central St. Petersburg café owned by Wagner Group chairman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

In late August, Daria Dugina, the daughter of pro-Kremlin thinker Alexander Dugin, died in her car explosion in the Moscow region.