Pro-Kremlin Russian writer, Zakhar Prilepin, who survived an assassination attempt on Saturday, has been brought out of drug-induced sleep, his Spokesperson Yelizaveta Kondakova told reporters on Sunday.
“He is in as good spirits as can be given the situation. He’s well. He passed along this thanks to his family,” she said.
Governor of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Gleg Nikitin confirmed this information. “As for Zakhar’s condition: he has been brought out of drug-induced sleep and is conscious; doctors say that he is stable,” he wrote on Telegram.
On Saturday morning, an explosive device went off in Zakhar Prilepin’s Audi Q7. The incident, which occurred in the village of Pionersky in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region, left the writer wounded and killed his driver. There were no other casualties, the police said.
A criminal case was launched under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code (Act of Terrorism). Law enforcement officials told TASS that a sabotage group might have been behind the attack. A man named Alexander Permyakov, detained on suspicion of being involved in the assassination attempt, testified to having acted on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence agencies.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry, in a statement on Saturday, blamed Ukraine and its Western patrons, in the first place, the US as primarily responsible for the terrorist attack against writer Prilepin.
“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with the Ukrainian authorities, but with their Western patrons, in the first place, the United States, who since the coup d’etat of February 2014 have painstakingly nurtured the anti-Russian neo-Nazi project in Ukraine,” the statement reads.
“The lack of Washington’s condemnation of another in a string of terrorist attacks against a Russian journalist and public figure is an act of self-exposure by the US authorities. The silence of international organizations concerned is impermissible.
“The terrorist attack against Prilepin is yet another manifestation of the systemic approach to liquidating ideological opponents, which has been actively cultivated in Ukraine by Washington since 2014 to have becoming a basic reflex of the Kiev regime,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The Foreign Ministry offered condolences to the near and dear ones of the man who died in the attack and wished Prilepin a prompt recovery.
TASS
