An armed assailant shot dead in the city of Lviv the former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Irina Farion, known for her nationalism and noisy campaigns in defense of the Ukrainian language, reported Reuters, quoted by BTA.
Police have launched a massive manhunt for the alleged perpetrator who shot 60-year-old Farion on the street in the western city of Lviv. Regional Governor Maxim Kozicki reported on his Telegram account that she died in the hospital.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko reported in “Telegram” that the leading versions on which the investigators are currently working are that the murder is connected to the political activity of the victim or that there is a personal motive behind taking her life.
Law enforcement agencies are working in cooperation with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to apprehend the perpetrator, the minister wrote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was receiving regular reports about the search for the shooter. He stated that any acts of violence must be condemned.
Farion, who is a linguist, became a member of the nationalist party “Svoboda” in 2005 and was elected as an MP in 2012, but failed in subsequent attempts to win a mandate. She was also a member of the Lviv Regional Council.
Farion gained notoriety for his frequent campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and to censure Russian-speaking public figures.
In 2018, when Ukraine was battling separatists in the east of the country, she called for “every Russian-speaker to be kicked in the jaw”. In the first months after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, Farion sharply denounced the Russian-speaking fighters of the "Azov" regiment, which for three months defended the port city of Mariupol.
Although the Ukrainian language is the only official language in Ukraine, many of its residents speak Russian as their first language, a legacy from the days of the Soviet Union, when Ukrainian was suppressed by official state authorities. The promotion of the language has long been an important issue, with the Supreme Rada passing laws to enshrine its use in public life and in the service sector.
/VS/
Source: www.bta.bg