A UKRAINIAN nationalist and former deputy who angered Moscow was 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 being rushed to hospital.
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Amid fears of a Russian trail, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered a manhunt for the shooter, 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 authorities also linked the shooting to Farion’s political activity or 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.
She also served on the Lviv regional council.
Farion was a staunch supporter of the Ukrainian language and controversially criticized the many members of Ukraine’s military who spoke Russian.
“They weren’t fully Ukrainian,” she said.
Farion also defended the abandonment of the Russian language in the country, although around a quarter of the population uses it as their first language.
The former congresswoman was under investigation in Ukraine for her outspoken comments and faced strong criticism from the Russians.
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In 2018, when Ukraine was fighting Russian-funded separatists who had seized territory in the east, it called for a campaign to “punch all Russian-speaking people in the jaw.”
And in the early months of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Farion denounced the Russian-speaking fighters of the Azov regiment who defended the port city of Mariupol for three months.
Putin’s chief propagandist, Margarita Simonyan, head of the state media empire RT, said: “Irina Farion, who dreamed of the ‘complete elimination’ of the Russian-speaking population, has been eliminated….
“God solves everything without us.”
Farion was watched for several weeks by a man who is now the prime suspect, reports say.
“Tragic news: despite all the efforts of the medical team, Irina Farion’s life could not be saved,” said Lviv Regional Governor Maksym Kozytskyi.
A neighbor said the alleged suspect was “dressed strangely and was constantly looking at the entrance to where she lives.”
He was reportedly seen wearing a long sweater, sunglasses and a hat.
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The decision comes after a court in Russia sentenced innocent American journalist Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison following a mock trial.
Evan, 32, pleaded not guilty during the closed-door trial on false espionage charges, which ended abruptly on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal reporter was unfairly accused by Vladimir Putin’s thugs of collecting “secret information” for the CIA.
They have not offered any evidence of Evan’s “crimes” since he was arrested on March 29, 2023.
Prosecutors sought a horrific 18-year sentence for Evan, the first journalist in Russia to be charged with espionage since the Soviet era.
Photos from the courtroom in Yekaterinburg, southwestern Russia, showed him inside a glass cage as the verdict was read.
Meanwhile, the paranoid Putin has installed a ring of air defenses around his lake and forest palace northwest of Moscow amid fears of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Russian media claims to have mapped the array of Pantsir-S1 air defense systems that protect the 71-year-old dictator’s luxurious residence in Valdai.
There is also an S-400 air defense system deployed in the Steel Ring – much more comprehensive than many Russian cities.
A new Pantsir-S1 – mounted on a tower in the forest of Ryabinovy Island – appeared near Valdai’s residence.
This was seen in Google satellite images taken on May 6 this year, it was reported.
He shares the Valdai retreat with his lover Alina Kabaeva, 41, and her secret young family, independent media reports in Russia claim.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
