The Investigative Committee announced the initiation of a criminal case due to the explosion of Zakhar Prilepin's Audi Q7 car in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, as a result of which the writer was injured. A photo from the scene of the incident was published on the Telegram channel of the UK.
Updated: The Investigative Committee qualified the attempt on Prilepin as a terrorist attack, TASS reports .
The Investigative Committee claims that “forensic investigators from the central office of the department and employees of the forensic center of the Investigative Committee of Russia were sent to the scene.”
Also, a video is published on social networks, the frames show that the front of the car was completely torn off.
A disaster medicine helicopter with Prilepin took off from Pionersky to Nizhny Novgorod, Ni Mash reports. According to the channel, the writer will be taken to Semashko, from there he will be transported to one of the Moscow clinics for treatment. Baza claims that the police are questioning the residents of the village. They told law enforcement officers that the day before the explosion they saw a man unknown to them, who walked for a long time in the forest, this is not a local resident, he had not been seen there before.
On the morning of May 6, pro-Russian Telegram channels and media reported that the car of Zakhar Prilepin was blown up near Nizhny Novgorod, he was inside at that moment. According to Mash, Prilepin is in serious condition, both of his legs are broken. According to preliminary information, the IED was activated remotely, they followed Prilepin and waited for him to get his daughter out of the car. WarGonzo also claims that Prilepin's personal bodyguard, "a friend of the WarGonzo project" callsign "Evil", was killed in the explosion. The Atesh organization took responsibility for the assassination attempt on Prilepin, the participants do not provide evidence of involvement in the explosion. Prilepin's wife told the police that he had indeed received threats. In January, members of the Atesh movement reported that they intended to "eliminate Prilepin."
In 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, Prilepin said that he had rethought his attitude towards the modern Russian government, declared a “personal truce” and the absence of “the slightest inducement to confrontation” to it. From 2016 to 2018, Prilepin took part in hostilities in eastern Ukraine. In February 2022, the European Union imposed personal sanctions against Prilepin, who previously signed a letter supporting the Russian invasion. In January 2023, Prilepin signed a contract with the Federal Service of National Guard Troops and went to war in Ukraine.
In 2019, Prilepin said in an interview that he ran a combat unit that "killed people in large numbers." According to him, not a single unit from the Donetsk battalions could compare in terms of performance with his battalion.