Russian Politician Injured After Car Explosion

Russian politician and writer Zakhar Prilepin has been left injured after the car he was in blew up, according to Russian media reports.

Amid conflicting media reports as to the severity of his injuries, the Mash news outlet said on its Telegram channel that a bomb had been planted under the hood of the Audi Q7 Prilepin was travelling in on Saturday morning. Newsweek has been unable to independently verify the claims.

The politician was injured and his driver killed after the incident in the Nizhny Novgorod region, the post added. Radio Free Europe reported Prilepin had been "seriously injured" while the the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, said that his condition was "fine."

The news outlet Nexta tweeted a video of the aftermath of the incident which showed a vehicle on its back next to a large crater. Emergency services said that he was in a "serious" condition and suffered leg injuries, state news agency Interfax reported.

A strident supporter of the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, Prilepin is a Russian nationalist writer who led the political party For Truth until it merged into A Just Russia in February 2021. He is also a renowned author with an international reputation.

His role as a battalion commander in Donbas fighting against the Ukrainians at the start of the war in 2014 and his boasts about his exploits in the full-scale invasion would have made him a target for Ukrainians, according to Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the European Resilience Initiative Center, a German think tank.

"Prilepin is definitely a tier-one propagandist," Sumlenny told Newsweek from Berlin. "He was one of the faces of the Russian invasion, for sure."

While this would have made Prilepin a prominent target for the Ukrainians, Sumlenny did not rule out his being a victim of an internal Russian squabble involving Russian security services and military commanders.

"Prilepin demonstrated that he is part of such an internal fight in Russia as he supported (Yevgeny) Prigozhin this week," said Sumlenny referring to the chief of the Wagner Group of mercenaries, who issued a message of thanks on Friday to the politician for his backing.

Prigozhin has been very critical of the Russian defense establishment and so Prolepin's choice to side with the Wagner chief could have put him at odds with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Vladimir Putin's war commander, Valery Gerasimov.

This means he may have "turned into some sort of enemy or target for the enemies of Prigozhin," Sumlenny said, "It could be a message for Prigozhin."

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed the West for the incident and said it was the "direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain."

"The fact has come true: Washington and Nato fed another international terrorist cell— the Kyiv regime," she said.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry for comment via email.

The Atesh partisan group, created by Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars in September 2022, is claiming credit for the assassination attempt.

Tass reported that it was not "the first attempt on patriotic figures in Russia in recent months." It listed the death of the military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, real name Maxim Fomin, at a St. Petersburg café which Moscow blames on Ukrainian intelligence.

On March 6, 2023, the FSB said there had been a thwarted assassination of Russian businessman, chairman of the board of directors of the Tsargrad group, Konstantin Malofeyev.

Tass also noted the death of Darya Dugina last August after her car was blown up in the Moscow region. She was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, who pushes Russian propaganda and is credited with being the architect of Russia's ongoing Ukraine invasion.

Update 05/06/23, 8:30:a.m. ET: This article has been updated with further information and comment.