Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credits: Natalia KOLESNIKOVA / AFP 16:39 pm, May 06, 2023

A staunch supporter of the Kremlin attack in Ukraine, Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, 47, was injured Saturday in the "explosion" of his car in Russia. He is a well-known figure of the Russian literary scene, translated into several countries, who has been committed since 2014 to the pro-Russian separatists of eastern Ukraine.

Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, a staunch supporter of the Kremlin attack in Ukraine, was injured Saturday in the "explosion" of his car in Russia. Moscow blames the attack on Ukraine and the West, while at the same time killing the writer's driver. Unnamed medical and security sources, quoted by Russian news agencies, say the writer was wounded in the legs. "Zakhar (Prilepin) has minor fractures, there is no danger to his life," Gleb Nikitin, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, said on Telegram.

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According to the Investigative Committee, which speaks of a "terrorist act", the writer was in his car "with his family" when the explosion occurred around 11 am (8 am GMT) in a locality in the Borski district. A photo of the scene of the incident, released by the Investigation Committee, shows a white vehicle with a shredded front and turned over on the roof, in front of a crater on a dirt road, in a wooded area.

A well-known figure in Russian literature

A well-known figure on the Russian literary scene, translated into several countries, the 47-year-old writer became involved in 2014 in favour of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, alongside whom he fought. Since then, he has regularly visited eastern Ukraine and defended President Vladimir Putin and his massive offensive against Kiev, launched on February 24, 2022.

Author of novels and short stories inspired by his personal experience, especially in war zones, he actively participates in patriotic and traditionalist movements in Russia. Under European sanctions since the end of February 2022, he participated last year in a parliamentary group responsible for flushing out cultural actors in Russia with "anti-Russian positions".

Allied to Vladimir Putin's regime

"Russia is turning into Donbass (eastern region of Ukraine). A large number of people want to destroy it (...) I have no conscience about what is happening. It happened, now we have to go all the way," he said in an interview with Chita.ru media last November. Before joining Vladimir Putin's regime, this veteran of the Chechen wars in the 1990s had been active for a time in the opposition within the national-Bolshevik party of the sulphurous writer Eduard Limonov (1943-2020).

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Zakhar Prilepin is not the first figure in the Russian pro-war movement to be targeted by an attack. But he is luckier than others. In early April, an influential military blogger, Vladlen Tatarskii (real name Maxim Fomin), a supporter of the offensive in Ukraine, was killed when a booby-trapped statuette exploded in a café in central St. Petersburg. And at the end of last August, Darya Dugina, the daughter of the imperialist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a car explosion in the Moscow region.