Who is Zakhar Prilepin, target of car bomb in Russia?

Zakhar Prilepin, who was injured in a car blast in Russia that killed his driver, is the third prominent Prowar figure to be targeted by a bomb since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The 47-year-old novelist was hospitalized on Saturday with injuries to both legs but was conscious and “doing well,” state news agency TASS reported, citing officials.

The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine and the Western states that supported it, especially the United States, of attacking the writer. However, a senior official in Kiev has accused Moscow of faking the incident.

Prilepin, the author of several novels inspired by his wartime experiences and life in the Russian provinces, was once lauded by literary critics in the West before he put his pen and pistol in the service of the Kremlin in Ukraine.

Born in 1975 in the Ryazan region, Prilepin was sent to fight in Russia’s wars against Chechen separatists in the 1990s.

After returning to civilian life, he recounted the horrors of war in his debut novel “Pathologies”, which chronicles the actions of a special forces unit, including hard drinking and killings.

He wrote five more novels and also wrote numerous poems, essays and articles. His works have been translated in Western Europe and he has received several state awards.

As Prilepin tried to make a name for himself in the literary world in Europe in the 2000s, he became an opposition activist, criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and campaigning for Russia’s poor against corrupt oligarchs.

Everything changed with Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

Prilepin has since embraced Putin’s policies and continued to fight alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, revealing in 2017 that he had raised his own battalion.

“I think a writer is entitled to any position,” Prilepin said at a press conference in Moscow after the revelation.

“He can stand with a flag saying peace to the world or he can take up arms.”

In a 2019 YouTube interview, he boasted that his unit had “killed people in large numbers”.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, Prilepin, who has about 300,000 subscribers each on his Telegram and YouTube channels, became a staunch supporter of the military campaign.

“I have no guilt about what is happening. It happened, now we have to push through,” he said in November.

Prilepin has also been politically active as co-chairman of the party “A Just Russia – For Truth”.

Last year, he played a prominent role in founding GRAD, a parliamentary group that seeks to identify cultural figures with “anti-Russian” views and persuade the state and corporations to stop funding them.

GRAD’s initials stand for “Group to Investigate Anti-Russian Cultural Activities”. Grad is also the Russian word for “hail”, and the name of a missile system.

Prilepin has been sanctioned by Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the European Union for his support of the war in Ukraine.

The writer and politician has compared himself to two giants of Russian literature – Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Lermontov – who both fought like soldiers before turning to writing.

According to Prilepin, Tolstoy and Lermontov would have joined the Russian army in Ukraine if they were alive today.

Interviewed by AFP news agency in Paris in 2018, he said he fought out of “empathy” and made no secret of his desire for Russia to take over more of Ukraine.

“Our goal is to conquer and control territory,” he said.

“Killing is not an end in itself and we will be held accountable in hell.”