Gunman shoots dead far-right politician in Ukraine

Kiev, Ukraine >> A gunman has shot dead a far-right Ukrainian politician who sparked controversy with campaigns promoting the Ukrainian language and discrediting Russian-speaking compatriots, authorities said.

Former lawmaker Iryna Farion was a deeply divisive figure. A linguist who belonged to a hardline nationalist party, she was despised by some for her condemnation of Russian-speaking fighters in elite Ukrainian military units. Many Ukrainians speak Russian, especially in eastern regions closer to Russia.

Farion, 60, was shot in the head by a young man on Friday night in the western city of Lviv. Ukrainian authorities said early this morning that they were still searching for the gunman, who fled the scene. Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said he believed she was the target of an assassination.

“This was not a spontaneous killing,” he told a news conference on Saturday, adding that it could have been politically motivated or a personal matter. He did not rule out possible Russian involvement.

Several former officials also said Moscow could be behind the killing in an attempt to sow division, while others feared the shooting could polarize society. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said today: “All versions are being investigated, including the one that leads to Russia.”

Mysterious deaths and assassinations were a feature of Ukraine’s political landscape before Russia’s large-scale invasion of the country in 2022. However, there have been no signs of significant killings since the outbreak of the war.

Some Ukrainians called for a swift and transparent investigation into the killing, saying it would be a sign that Ukraine, even in wartime, remains a functioning democracy. Zelenskyy said Friday that “any violence must be condemned, and all those responsible for this attack must be fully held to account.”

Farion, an award-winning linguist who taught at Lviv National Polytechnic University, began her career as a member of the Communist Party when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. She turned right, however, and joined the hardline Svoboda, or Freedom Party, in 2005. She was elected to parliament in 2012, but her attempts to retain or regain her seat failed.

Svoboda wrote on Facebook that “this crime benefits Muscovy and was undoubtedly committed by her,” using a derogatory term for Russia. But already, in a sign of possible future divisions, Svoboda accused the Ukrainian government of not purging itself of pro-Russian agents, making the assassination possible.

Mykola Davidiuk, a Ukrainian political analyst, said Farion was a regular guest on Ukrainian television programs in the early 2010s, a time when the Ukrainian political landscape was deeply divided between forces advocating closer ties with Moscow and others calling for a clean break with Russia.

“She was a very controversial figure,” he said.

Last fall, Farion criticized elements of the Ukrainian military, particularly members of the Azov and 3rd Assault Brigades — two units with ties to far-right and nationalist movements — for communicating in Russian. She said she could not call Russian-speaking troops Ukrainians.

Language is a sensitive subject in Ukraine.

Before the war, most people spoke both Ukrainian and Russian, the lingua franca of the Soviet Union. Zelenskyy himself, a native Russian speaker, only began speaking Ukrainian in public when he ran for president in 2019.

The Russian invasion in 2022 caused many people in Ukraine to stop speaking Russian and switch completely to Ukrainian. However, Russian is still widely spoken in the country, including in the military. Many soldiers have no problem with it and say that the most important thing is to communicate well in combat.

Farion’s accusations sparked outrage in Ukraine, with some saying she was trying to divide society and discredit elite military units known for their fierce defense of Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol during the war.

“What she said about those men was incomprehensible to me,” Sofia Kocharovska, 23, a resident of Kiev, Ukraine, said today.

In November, Ukrainian security services launched a criminal investigation into Farion’s statements and publications. She was also dismissed from Lviv Polytechnic that month.

However, she appealed the decision in court and in May an appeals court ruled that she should resume her duties and receive compensation.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.