He wants to be a writer-soldier. Zakhar Prilepin was praised by Western critics for a time, before putting his pen and his Kalashnikov at the service of the Kremlin in Ukraine. The best-selling writer who has become a champion of an ultra-nationalist line was seriously injured in an explosion that practically destroyed his car on Saturday May 6, near Nizhni-Novgorod, Russia’s third largest city, 400 kilometers east of Moscow. .
This attack, which killed the driver and comrade in arms of Zakhar Prilepin, comes as drone strikes, sabotage and alleged attacks have multiplied in recent weeks on Russian territory, without their perpetrators being clearly identified.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, which speaks of a “terrorist act”, the explosion of Zakhar Prilepin’s car occurred around 11 a.m. in a locality in the Borski district of the Nizhni-Novgorod region. The Interfax agency, citing the medical rescue services, said the writer was in “serious” condition. “It was decided not to transfer him to Moscow and to operate on him in Nizhny Novgorod. His condition is considered serious,” the source said. The Ministry of the Interior quickly announced the arrest of a suspect born in 1993. And that the latter had “declared to have acted according to the instructions of the Ukrainian special services”, according to the Investigative Committee.
A veteran of the Chechen wars
Shaved head and budding beard, fast and slightly shaky flow, Zakhar Prilepin, 47, is a prominent figure in the media in Russia. His books, inspired by his experience of the war and the Russian provinces, sold there successfully. Prilepin is a veteran of the wars in Chechnya in the 1990s. On his return to civilian life, he recounts in his first novel, Diseases, released in 2004, the fights of a special forces unit in Grozny, between drinking and massacres. The tone is set for what follows.
His novels and short stories, which excel in describing the life of young people in the provinces, won several prizes and were translated in Europe, particularly in France. At that time, in the 2000s, Zakhar Prilepin campaigned in the opposition within the national-Bolshevik party of the sulphurous writer Edouard Limonov (1943-2020), mixing extreme left social demands, nationalism and nostalgia for soviet empire. The author-soldier always claims “social” convictions in favor of the poorest against the oligarchs and the corrupt.
Everything changed with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. He embraced Vladimir Putin’s cause by becoming one of the voices of the Kremlin speech, appearing regularly on Russian television sets, between two round trips to the Donbass. In 2018, questioned by AFP in Paris on his participation in the conflict in the Donbass, he said: “Our goal is to control and conquer territories. Killing is not an end in itself and we will have to be accountable in hell.”
“I have no case of conscience about what is happening”
The large-scale attack against Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, has in no way upset his convictions. “I have no conscience about what is happening. It happened, now we have to go all the way,” he said in November 2022. He defended pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine with his pen, then even with his body, going to fight alongside them. “Russia is turning into Donbass (region in eastern Ukraine). A lot of people want to destroy it,” he said in an interview with the media. Chita.ru in November 2022.
Targeted by European sanctions since the end of February 2022, he participated last year in a parliamentary group responsible for flushing out actors in the cultural world in Russia with “anti-Russian positions”. On his own scale, he is one of the players in the cultural purge underway in Russia, where dissident voices are persecuted, imprisoned or driven into exile.
The writer has already compared himself to Leo Tolstoy or Mikhail Lermontov, who both fought as soldiers before recounting their experiences. And, according to him, these two literary giants could have joined the Russian fighters in Ukraine.