US responsible for Prilepin car bombing – Moscow
The US bears ultimate responsibility for the terrorist attack against Russian writer and activist Zakhar Prilepin, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a statement on Saturday. Killing ideological opponents, the ministry added, has become “the Kiev regime’s basic reflex.”
Prilepin, a journalist and novelist who fought in Ukraine in a Russian National Guard unit earlier this year, was seriously injured by a roadside bomb in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region earlier on Saturday. Prilepin’s assistant, who was behind the wheel, was killed.
A suspect apprehended near the scene of the blast told Russian investigators that he had been recruited by an unspecified Ukrainian intelligence agency in 2019, and admitted to planting two anti-tank mines beside the road and detonating them remotely as Prilepin’s car passed.
“The terrorist attack against Evgeny Prilepin is yet another demonstration of [Kiev’s] systematic approach to eliminating ideological opponents,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to Prilepin by his birth name.
“The responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies on the Ukrainian authorities together with their Western patrons, mainly the United States, through whose efforts the anti-Russia project blended with neo-Nazism has been painstakingly nurtured in Ukraine since the coup in February 2014,” the statement read.
The ministry described how enemies of the Ukrainian state are added to the ‘Mirotvorets’ (Peacemaker) database, with their personal details listed next to a description of their “crimes” against Ukraine. This ‘kill list’ is allegedly maintained by the Ukrainian security services, and includes Western journalists and politicians who have spoken favorably of Russia or condemned Ukraine and its government.
The ministry added that the list is “used by hired killers” to target Kiev’s enemies, and noted that Russia has repeatedly called on Ukraine’s Western supporters to have the list taken offline, which they have thus far refused to do.
“Time has shown that Washington and its satellites deliberately ignore this and other crimes of the Ukrainian authorities,” the statement continued.
As Ukraine’s largest financial backer and provider of intelligence, Russia contends that the US was ultimately responsible not just for the attack on Prilepin, but also the murders of nationalist writer Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, and the attempted assassination of Tsargrad TV founder Konstantin Malofeyev.
Moscow has also blamed Washington for a recent, albeit unsuccessful, drone attack on the Kremlin. “We know full well that decisions to carry out such terrorist actions are made not in Kiev, but in Washington,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.
