KYIV, Ukraine >> A gunman shot and killed a far-right Ukrainian politician who stirred controversy with campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and discredit Russian-speaking compatriots, authorities say.

The former lawmaker, Iryna Farion, was a highly divisive figure. A linguist who belonged to a hard-line nationalist party, she was despised by some for her denunciation of Russian-speaking fighters in elite Ukrainian military units. Many Ukrainians speak Russian, especially in eastern regions closer to Russia.

Farion, 60, was shot in the head by a young man on a street in the western city of Lviv on Friday evening, and Ukrainian authorities said early today that they were still searching for the gunman, who fled the scene. Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said he believed she was targeted for killing.

“This was not a spontaneous murder,” he told a news conference Saturday, adding that it might have been politically motivated or a personal matter. He did not rule out possible Russian involvement.

Several former officials also said Moscow might have been behind the killing in an attempt to sow divisions, while other people raised fears that the shooting could polarize society. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said today, “All versions are being investigated, including the one that leads to Russia.”

Mysterious deaths and assassinations were a feature of Ukraine’s political landscape before Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022. But there had been no sign of any high-profile killings since the war broke out.

Some Ukrainians called for a swift and transparent investigation into the killing, saying it would be a sign that, even at war, Ukraine remains a functioning democracy. Zelenskyy said Friday that “any violence deserves to be condemned, and anyone responsible for this attack must be held fully accountable.”

Farion, an award-winning linguist who taught at the Lviv Polytechnic National University, started out as a member of the Communist Party when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, before veering right and eventually joining the hard-line nationalist Svoboda, or Freedom, party in 2005. She was elected to parliament in 2012 but failed in subsequent attempts to keep or regain her seat.

Svoboda wrote on Facebook that “this crime benefits Muscovy and was undoubtedly committed by it,” using a derogatory term for Russia. But already, in a sign of possible divisions to come, Svoboda accused Ukraine’s government of failing to purge itself of pro-Russian agents, thereby enabling the killing.

Mykola Davidiuk, a Ukrainian political analyst, said that Farion was a regular guest on Ukrainian television shows in the early 2010s, a time when Ukraine’s political landscape was deeply fractured between forces advocating closer ties with Moscow and others calling for a clear break with Russia.

“She was a very controversial figure,” he said.

Last fall, Farion denounced elements of the Ukrainian military, in particular members of the Azov and 3rd Assault Brigades — two units with ties to far-right and nationalist movements — for communicating in Russian. She said she couldn’t call Russian-speaking forces Ukrainians.

Language is a sensitive issue in Ukraine.

Before the war, most people spoke both Ukrainian and Russian, the lingua franca of the Soviet Union. Zelenskyy himself, a native Russian speaker, only started speaking Ukrainian publicly when he ran for president in 2019.

Russia’s 2022 invasion prompted many in Ukraine to stop speaking Russian and switch entirely to Ukrainian. But Russian is still widely spoken in the country, including in the military. Many soldiers have no problem with it, saying that the most important thing is good communication in combat.

Farion’s accusations caused a wave of indignation in Ukraine, with some saying she was trying to divide society and discredit elite military units known for their fierce defense of Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol during the war.

“What she said about those men was incomprehensible to me,” Sofia Kocharovska, 23, a resident of Kyiv, Ukraine, said today.

In November, the Ukrainian security services opened a criminal investigation into Farion’s statements and publications. She was also fired from Lviv Polytechnic that month.

But she challenged the decision in court, and an appeals court ruled in May that she should be reinstated and receive compensation.

———

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company