A UKRAINIAN nationalist and former MP who infuriated Moscow has been shot and killed in her hometown.
Irina Farion, 60, was shot in the head by a gunman in the city of Lviv but died after she was rushed to hospital.
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Amid fears of a Russian trace, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has since ordered a manhunt for the gunman, who managed to escape the scene.
The investigation will be led by agents from the SBU intelligence service and the national police.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, writing on Telegram, said officials were for the moment also linking the shooting either to Farion’s political activity or to a personal motive.
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.
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She had also served on the Lviv regional council.
Farion was a staunch advocate of the Ukrainian language and controversially had criticised the many Russian-speaking members of Ukraine’s armed forces.
“They were not fully Ukrainian,” she said.
Farion also advocated for the abandonment of Russian-speaking in the country, even though around a quarter of the population use it as their first language.
The former MP had been under investigation in Ukraine for her outspoken comments and faced strong criticism from Russians.
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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”.
And in the early months of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Farion denounced Russian-speaking fighters of the Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol for three months.
Top Putin propagandist Margarita Simonyan, head of the RT state media empire, said: “Irina Farion, who dreamed of the ‘complete disposal’ of the Russian-speaking population, has been disposed of….
“God sorts it out without us.”
Farion had been watched for several weeks by a man who is now the main suspect, reports say.
“Tragic news: despite all efforts by medical staff, Irina Farion’s life could not be saved,” said Lviv regional governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
A neighbour said the alleged suspect was “dressed strangely and was constantly looking at the entrance where she lives”.
He was allegedly seen in a long sweater, dark glasses and wearing a hat.
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It comes after a court in Russia sentenced innocent American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison following a sham trial.
Evan, 32, pleaded not guilty during the closed-door trial over bogus espionage charges, which came to an abrupt end on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reporter has been wrongly accused by Vladimir Putin’s crooks of collecting “secret information” for the CIA.
They have offered no evidence of Evan’s ‘crimes’ since he was arrested on March 29, 2023.
Prosecutors had requested a horrific 18-year sentence for Evan, the first journalist in Russia to be charged with spying since the Soviet era.
Pictures from the court in Yekaterinburg, south west Russia, showed him inside a glass cage as the verdict was read out.
Meanwhile, paranoid Putin installed a ring of air defences around his lake and forest palace northwest of Moscow amid fears of Ukrainian drone strikes.
Russian media claim to have mapped the array of Pantsir-S1 air defence systems guarding the 71-year-old dictator’s lavish Valdai residence.
There is also an S-400 air defence system deployed in the ring of steel – far more comprehensive than many Russian cities.
A new Pantsir-S1 – mounted on a tower in the forest on Ryabinovy Island – has appeared near the Valdai residence.
This was seen on Google satellite images taken on May 6 this year, it was reported.
He shares the Valdai retreat with his lover Alina Kabaeva, 41, and their secret young family, independent media reports in Russia claim.
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