Irina Farion, a former nationalist lawmaker and a staunch defender of the use of the Ukrainian language against the Russian language, has died after being the victim of a gun attack in Lviv, western Ukraine, AFP reports.
In a Telegram message, Ukrainian national police said she had succumbed in hospital after being targeted in an assassination attempt.
"I have always said that there is no safe place in Ukraine," Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi regretted, condemning the "heinous murder" and offering condolences to the victim's relatives.
"All CCTV cameras are being checked, witnesses are being questioned and several areas (of Lviv) are being checked. All traces are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X.
Igor Klimenko, interior minister, indicated that the alleged killer may have been hiding around Irina Farion's home for several days.
He said that investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by "personal animosity" related to the victim's activities but did not rule out a "contract killing."
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Freedom Party between 2012 and 2014.
AFP met her at Lviv University in April 2022, a few weeks after the Russian invasion began, during a report on efforts to boost the use of the Ukrainian language in the face of Russian, which remains the mother tongue of many Ukrainians.
"If we don't protect our language, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will come all the way here, even to this building," she said, saying she was waging "a constant battle of Ukrainians for the right to be Ukrainian."
But her radical defense of the Ukrainian language has made her a controversial figure.
In November 2023, during a television interview, she said she could not "consider as Ukrainians" the soldiers who fought for the Azov Brigade but continued to speak Russian.
She said, "The fighters are great patriots, so let them show their patriotism by learning the language of Taras Shevchenko, the great Ukrainian national poet." | BGNES
