Moscow, Russia - Russia is pointing the finger at Ukraine for a car bomb attack on the pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin, calling it a "terrorist attack."

Prilepin was seriously injured on Saturday morning when an explosive device attached to his car detonated in the Nizhny Novgorod region east of Moscow. His driver died.

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said that the investigation was ongoing, "but it is already clear from the materials... that there is talk of another terrorist attack organized and carried out by the Kyiv regime and backed by Western curators."

Two suspects have been detained, one of which was filmed confessing that he had been recruited by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU).

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When asked by the internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda, a representative of the SBU said they would "neither confirm nor deny" involvement in such attacks.

The governor of Nizhny Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, said Prilepin had since undergone surgery, having suffered several broken bones.

A Ukrainian movement called Atesh posted on social media to suggest it was behind the attack on Prilepin.

The group describes itself as a partisan movement of ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars and has claimed several attacks in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories in recent months.

"The Atesh movement had been after Prilepin since the beginning of the year," the text said. It added: "We had a feeling that sooner or later he would be blown up." The credibility of the message could not be verified.

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Prilepin, who is known outside Russia for his novel Sankya, is a strong supporter of the war against Ukraine ordered by President Vladimir Putin more than a year ago. The nationalist author has even fought in Ukraine himself.

It would not be the first time that a war supporter in Russia became the target of an assassination attempt. In early April, the prominent military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky died in an explosion in a St Petersburg café.

Last August, Darya Dugina – daughter of the right-wing nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin – was killed in a car bomb blast near Moscow.