Has the Ukrainian guerrilla group Atesh, founded last fall, struck again? She has claimed responsibility on social media for a bomb attack on renowned nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin. The 47-year-old author was driving his car in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow on Saturday when an explosive device attached to the vehicle detonated, several Russian state news agencies reported, citing local authorities. Prilepin was injured in the process.
A few hours after the incident, which took place not far from the town of Bor, a man born in 1993 who allegedly has a criminal record was arrested, according to the Interior Ministry. The authority gave no further details. An investigation has been launched into a suspected terrorist attack, it said. Prilepin, who is known in Germany for his book “Sankya”, which was published in a translated version in 2012, is considered a strong supporter of the offensive war against Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir Putin more than a year ago. Meanwhile, the nationalist author even fought there himself.
Prilepin held several positions before joining the OMON police unit. It took part in operations in Chechnya in 1996 and 1999. During this time, he joined the National Bolsheviks, which have been banned since 2005 as an anti-constitutional organization. Prilepin now lives with his wife, two sons and two daughters in Donetsk in the partly Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Donbass. He has been on an EU sanctions list since February 2022.
Moscow: “Washington and NATO have fostered another terrorist cell”
The Russian government accused the US and the West in general of supporting Ukrainian terrorism. Moscow Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova reacted to the attack on Prilepin. “The fact has come out: Washington and NATO have harbored another international terrorist cell – the Kiev regime,” Zakharova said. The US and Britain bear “direct responsibility” for the attack, Zakharova insisted, but gave no evidence.
Describing itself as a partisan movement of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, Atesh has claimed responsibility for several attacks in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories in recent months. “The Atesh movement has been after Prilepin since the beginning of the year,” the group’s Telegram channel said. And further: “We had a feeling that sooner or later he would be blown up. Our predictions always come true because we don’t just talk, we do.” However, the credibility of the message could not be independently verified.
Source: Krone
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