(Kyiv) A former nationalist MP and ardent defender of the use of the Ukrainian language over Russian, Irina Farion, died after being shot in Lviv, western Ukraine, authorities announced on Friday evening.
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” said Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, denouncing a “heinous murder” and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, the attack took place on Friday evening, around 7:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. Eastern Time), when an unidentified individual shot at Irina Farion, seriously injuring her in the head.
All surveillance cameras are checked, witnesses are questioned and several neighborhoods [de Lviv] are being investigated. All leads are being explored, including the one leading to Russia.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian President, on X
PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian President
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko said at a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the alleged killer may have been hanging around Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but do not rule out a “contracted assassination” either.
Aged 60, this language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
In April 2022, a few weeks after the start of the Russian invasion, AFP met her at Lviv University during a report on efforts to strengthen the use of Ukrainian in the face of Russian, which remains the mother tongue of many Ukrainians.
“If we do not defend our language, [le président russe Vladimir] “Putin will come here, right into this building,” she assured, saying she was leading a “permanent battle of Ukrainians for the right to be Ukrainian.”
His radical defence of Ukrainian, however, made him a controversial figure.
In November 2023, she said in a television interview that she could not “consider as Ukrainians” the soldiers fighting for the Azov Brigade, but continued to speak Russian.
“The fighters are great patriots, so let them show their patriotism by learning the language of Taras Shevchenko,” the great Ukrainian national poet, she said.
Two dead in overnight Russian strikes
Russian bombings killed at least two civilians and injured four others in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv on Friday night, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
“At around 3:15 a.m., the enemy launched a missile attack on the town of Barvinkove in the Izium district,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
PHOTO THOMAS PETER, REUTERS
Smoke rises above trees in a field in the Kharkiv region, May 20, 2024.
According to the source, the strike killed two men aged 48 and 69, injured four other people, damaged around 50 buildings and, according to preliminary information, was carried out with three Russian Iskander missiles.
The prosecutor’s office added that a Russian missile also struck an agricultural enterprise in the village of Oleksiyivka shortly before midnight on Friday, without causing any casualties.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been tirelessly demanding more air defense systems from his Western allies to intercept the many Russian missiles and drones that strike the country’s cities every day.
On Friday, a Russian strike on a playground in Mykolaiv (South) killed at least four people, including a child, and injured 24, according to a new report communicated Saturday on Telegram by Oleksandr Senkevich, the mayor of this Ukrainian city.
Cyberattacks against countries supporting Ukraine
Spanish police announced on Saturday that they had arrested three people accused of participating in cyberattacks by a pro-Russian group targeting public institutions and strategic sectors in Spain and other NATO countries.
The attacks targeted countries that supported Ukraine in its fight against Russian invasion.
Two of the suspects were arrested in Huelva and Seville, in southern Spain, while the third was arrested in the Balearic Islands, a statement from the Guardia Civil said.
They were arrested for “computer crimes with terrorist intent” following a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which render websites or network resources unavailable by flooding them with malicious traffic.
The attacks were “organized by the Russia-linked hacking group called NoName057(16),” he said, without giving further details on the targets or the impact.
“The attacks were directed against state institutions and enterprises in strategic sectors in countries that supported Ukraine,” he added.