The following AP article concerns today’s attempted assassination of a pro-Kremlin writer in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in Russia.
Although my knowledge of Russian geography is limited, when I read the story, alarm bells went off in my head. Why would someone traveling from the Donbas to Moscow stop off in Nizhny Novgorod en route?
Read the story, and then take a look at the map at the top of this post:
Pro-Kremlin Novelist Injured in Car Explosion in Russia
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The car of a prominent pro-Kremlin novelist exploded in Russia on Saturday, injuring him and killing his driver, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency and law enforcement officials.
The incident involving the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a well-known nationalist writer and an ardent supporter of what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, took place in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow.
[…]
The regional governor of Niznhy Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, said Prilepin suffered minor bone fractures and was receiving medical help.
Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that Prilepin was traveling back to Moscow on Saturday from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and stopped in the Nizhny Novogorod [sic] region for a meal. [emphasis added]
I don’t know anything about Zakhar Prilepin or his role in Russian political intrigues. All I can do is look at the map and state the obvious: There is something fishy about this story.
If you go by the streets – yellow lines – you are right. Why the big detour?
He had a meeting.
That’s quite a long drive from the war zone and likely would have taken several days just to get to Nizhny Novgorod. Certainly stopping for a meal wasn’t the motivation for such a long detour. The method of bombing would be relevant to the story; if it was a bomb placed on the underside of the car then it could have been done while the vehicle was in the formerly Ukrainian territories. Presumably the vehicle would have Russian plates and with a personal driver likely would have stood out as conspicuous to any Ukrainian assassins. It could be something as prosaic as the target had a mistress there in Nizhny Novgorod, or some other equally embarrassing reason. And the bomb was just on a timer.
Insufficient information to make an accurate guess as to what’s really going on.
Maybe their airlines are as screwy as ours.. Ever try to go from Chicago O’Hare to Colorado Springs? You can either first go to Dallas, or to Minneapolis St.Paul.
Just sayin..
Ah, yes. O’Hare. Weather? (Don’t go to O’Hare. That place is terrible. Especially on Denver’s favorite airline).
Or perhaps this war has made it much more difficult to travel the other route(slow travel due to military convoys?), necessitating a roundabout route through Volgograd? Doubles the time, for sure.
Leave Luhansk and drive east to Rostov on the Don.
Turn north on an autobahn/interstate to Nizhni Novgorod ?
400 Km = ~240 miles @ 60 mph, so a timer on a bomb for ~ 6 hours (give a little time to emplace it) so yeah, it’s possible.
Some more detail on Prilepin:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/prominent-russian-novelist-wounded-car-bomb-assassination-attempt
Another source on Telegram meanwhile reported that he is out of mortal danger but lost a leg and a hand.
Nizhny Novgorod, even the furthest corner of its relatively large oblast, is indeed sufficiently far out of the way of the direct route to ask questions. But I’m not sure if it’s so implausible for a political activist to schedule meetings where it might just save part of the effort instead of going there separately. Or, since he was already known to be in danger of assassination, to take a deliberate byway.
Maybe we’re misled by an inaccuracy in the news article. Nizhny Novgorod is his home, hence it seems plausible that this is where he was headed:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/7/who-is-zakhar-prilepin-target-of-car-bomb-in-russia
The fastest route there from the south is taking the motorway up to the ring road around Moscow, and then on eastward. Motorways in Russia nowadays are good, many are newly built or renovated. The distance can be covered easily in a day by car. Russia is no longer the backwater we may remember.
There were some additional details about the attempted assassination today on The Duran.
Apparently Prilepen is from Nizhny Novgorod, and his daughter was also along with him. And she wasn’t injured because after she had left the vehicle for some reason the bomb was detonated, which implies it was under some kind of surveillance. And it was some Ukrainian terrorist group which claimed responsibility for the attack.
A mediocre author who compensates for this with a pro-Kremlin political agenda.
Too bad they didn’t kill him. He has extremely dull books.
If the reaction is like that, I suppose “dull” might not be the only problem with his works. We don’t know him at all, so from outside all we see is another political murder on the scoreboard of Russia’s enemies.
That’s it? A short detour sets your RADAR off??
And [ad hominem redacted] Elena.
Regardless as to how it plays day-to-day, the end game of this tit-for-tat game of car bomb, drone dropping grenades, assassins, truck bombs on bridges, missile strikes, ad nauseum, is for one side or both to get the others’ leader. Stratego with real blood. Since one of the players is decidedly on the defensive, and weaker, this will happen until the end of the conflict, unless of course, Ukraine manages to get Putin. In that case it’s any ones guess how it will play out. Mine would be a maelstrom of violence that could destroy the planet. Remember the guy whose daughter got whacked last year in his car in Moscow? This is just a game played by gangsters.
It would ultimately be far worse for Ukraine and the West if Putin was killed. Its difficult to believe throughout much of the West since he is portrayed through the state owned media as a reincarnation of Schicklgruber and more bloodthirsty than Ghengis Khan, but he is actually somewhat of a dovish figure within the Russian government. Whoever replaced him under those kinds of circumstances would be far more hardline and willing to unleash the entire strength of the Russian army on its enemies than Putin ever was. Elensky is safe, at least from the Russians, because of his incompetence and clownish cast of characters he’s surrounded himself with. Killing him is actually dangerous for the West as well, since it would run the risk of actually getting a Ukrainian leader who might tell the West to get stuffed and then sue for peace.
–insert murder [attempt]