Police are considering ‘personal animosity’ toward the former MP due to her social and political activities as a possible motive behind the attack.
ADVERTISEMENTA former Ukrainian MP has been shot and killed in the street near her home in Lviv.
60-year-old Iryna Farion was rushed to St. Panteleimon Hospital after the assault and later died from her injuries.
A manhunt is currently underway for her attacker, who fled from the scene.
Ukrainian officials said an investigation is being carried out and the attack is being treated as an assassination.
“All available surveillance cameras are being worked on, witness interviews are ongoing and several districts are being surveyed. All leads are being investigated, including the one that leads to Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on his official Telegram channel Saturday.
“All necessary forces from the National Police of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Security Service have been deployed to search for the criminal.”
Farion served as a member of the Ukrainian parliament for the ultranationalist party Svoboda between 2012 and 2014.
She was best known for her campaigns to promote the use of the Ukrainian language by Ukrainian officials who spoke Russian.
Farion was also a professor at the Ukrainian language department at Lviv Polytechnic University, although she was suspended from her position for a brief period of time.
She controversially criticised Russian-speaking members of Ukraine’s Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol in the first days of the full-scale invasion. Farion claimed she could not call Ukrainian soldiers Ukrainians if they spoke Russian.
Farion’s neighbours and friends have been bringing flowers and lanterns to the place where she was killed.
