A man gets life in prison in Russia for a car bomb that wounded a writer

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Louise Thomas

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A Russian court on Monday sentenced a man convicted over a car bombing that seriously wounded nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin to life in prison.

Prosecutors said the May 2023 bombing in the Nizhny Novogorod region was conducted at the direction of Ukraine's security services. Prilepin was serious injured and his driver died in the bombing.

The convicted defendant, Alexander Permyakov, is from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and once fought with the Russian-backed separatists there, news reports say.

Prilepin was known for his vehement defense of both the Russia-backed eastern Ukraine rebels who rose up in 2014, and of Russia's fighting in Ukraine that began in February 2022.

Since Russia sent troops into Ukraine, two prominent nationalist figures have been killed. Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in an August 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a well-known military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statue given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. Russian political activist Darya Trepova was convicted in the case and sentenced to 27 years. She said she was following orders from a contact in Ukraine.