A former Ukrainian nationalist lawmaker who often made outspoken statements defending the Ukrainian language has died after being shot by a gunman in her home city of Lviv, authorities said.
Iryna Farion, 60, briefly served as a member of Ukraine’s parliament for the ultra-nationalist Svoboda party and routinely attracted controversy for chiding officials and military personnel for speaking Russian.
“It has emerged that Iryna Farion died in hospital. Doctors did everything possible, but her injury was incompatible with life,” Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said in a post on Telegram late Friday.
“I always say that there is no safe place in Ukraine anymore. But to have such a brazen, audacious murder. The killer must be found,” he said.
An unknown gunman is thought to have shot Farion at around 7:30 pm local time (1630 GMT) on Friday evening, according to the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General.
“The victim was taken to hospital in a critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head,” it said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he had received reports of Farion’s assassination and that “all available surveillance cameras” were being checked.
All lines of enquiry are being investigated, “including one leading to Russia,” he added.
Farion was a trained linguist and one of the most vociferous defenders of the Ukrainian language, losing her job as a professor at a Lviv university after saying she could “not call” soldiers who spoke Russian Ukrainians.
She was later reinstated following a court ruling in Lviv, in the west of the country.
Since becoming independent in 1991, Ukraine has made legislative efforts to promote its national language, which was suppressed and often sidelined in favour of Russian during Soviet rule.
Ukrainian is the language of the majority of the country but many residents still speak Russian as their mother tongue.
