Gunman in Ukraine kills nationalist former parliamentarian

reuters_tickers

(Reuters) -A gunman on Friday shot and killed a nationalist former member of Ukraine’s parliament known for vociferous campaigns to defend the Ukrainian language, authorities said.

Police pressed on through the night with a wide search for the man alleged to have shot Iryna Farion, 60, on a street in the western city of Lviv.

Lviv Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Telegram that Farion had died after being taken to hospital.

Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, writing on Telegram, said investigators were for the moment linking the shooting either to Farion’s political activity or to a personal motive.

Police and Ukraine’s SBU security service were working together to track down the assailant, he wrote.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was receiving regular reports on efforts to capture the gunman. He said any act of violence was to be condemned.

Farion, a linguist, became a member of the nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party in 2005 and was elected to parliament in 2012, but failed in subsequent attempts to win a seat. She had also served on the Lviv regional council.

She gained prominence for frequent campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and discredit public officials who spoke Russian.

In 2018, when Ukraine was fighting Russian-financed separatists who had seized territory in the east, she called for a drive to “punch every Russian-speaking person in the jaw”.

In the early months after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Farion denounced Russian-speaking fighters of the Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol for three months.

Although Ukrainian is the sole state language of Ukraine, many residents speak Russian as a first language, a legacy of Soviet rule, when Ukrainian was under official pressure.

Promoting the language has long been an important issue, with parliament passing legislation to entrench its use in public life and in the service industry.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Olexander Kozhukhar; Editing by Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)