Medvedev vows attack on Russian writer will not go unpunished

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev assured this Saturday that the attack on the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin, who was injured in a car bomb explosion, would not go unpunished.

Medvedev, who is also the leader of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, sent a telegram to Prilepin calling the assassination attempt a “dastardly attack” perpetrated by Ukrainian “fascist extremists.”

“We are dealing with a cowardly enemy who seeks to intimidate us. (…) These crimes will not go unpunished. They do not expire. The people who committed them, as well as their ideological patrons, will not be able to get away with punishment, ”Medvedev wrote in a telegram.

Prilep’s car exploded this Saturday in Russia, injuring him and killing his driver, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing emergency services and police officials.

The incident with the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a well-known nationalist writer and ardent supporter of what the Kremlin calls a “special forces operation” in Ukraine, took place in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Novgorod, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow.

Russian authorities opened a criminal investigation into the “terrorist attack” and announced the arrest of a suspect: a previously convicted 30-year-old man.

Russian diplomacy has already reacted by accusing the US, NATO and Ukraine of planning a “terrorist attack” against the writer.

“Washington, together with NATO, has nurtured a new cell of international terrorism — the Kiev regime,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram.

So far, however, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the attack, saying it was too early to tell who was behind it.

Prilepin fought in Chechnya in the 1990s, and now he was returning from the Donbass front to his home in the Novogorodsky district.

The writer received minor fractures, and the driver of the car died.

Prilepin was the leader of the ultra-nationalist For Truth party he created in 2020, which merged with the A Just Russia party in 2021.

It was the third explosion involving prominent pro-Kremlin figures since the start of the war in Ukraine.

In August 2022, a bomb blast near Moscow killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of an influential Russian theorist and political thinker, often referred to as “Putin’s brain.” The authorities claimed that Ukraine was behind the explosion.

Last month, a popular military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, was killed in a cafe bombing in St. Petersburg, and authorities again blamed the Ukrainian security services for his organization.