An 18-year-old man has been apprehended in southeastern Ukraine on charges of murdering Iryna Farion, a noted former MP and linguistics professor.
The teenager was located in Dnipro, over 900km (550 miles) away from Lviv, where the shooting incident occurred. This arrest followed an extensive manhunt involving numerous investigators.
Farion, aged 60, gained notoriety in Ukraine for her statements urging that real Ukrainian patriots refrain from speaking Russian, calling it the language of the “aggressor country.”
She was dismissed from her university for inciting hatred but was reinstated by a Lviv court earlier this year.
Authorities are treating her murder as premeditated. Although CCTV footage failed to capture the shooting outside her residence, it reportedly recorded an image of the suspect, described as a slender young man.
Farion’s funeral drew a large crowd in Lviv. She served as an MP for two years until 2014, became a familiar figure on television, and garnered over 300,000 subscribers on her YouTube blog.
The motives behind the attack remain unclear, with President Volodymyr Zelensky indicating that detectives are exploring all potential leads, including possible Russian involvement in the murder.
Some reports suggest a neo-Nazi faction linked to Russia might be implicated, with claims from a member of the nationalist Svoboda party that the shooter received instructions from Russia.
While there is no concrete evidence of Russian involvement, pro-Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan remarked on social media that Farion, who had called for the “complete elimination” of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population, faced a similar fate.
Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko reported the suspect’s detention at his residence in Dnipro on Thursday, revealing that the teenager had rented multiple apartments in Lviv prior to the shooting.
One local source highlighted the suspect’s background as a young football player who participated in a recent tournament.
The interior minister credited investigators with “139 hours of continuous work,” meticulously tracing the escape route and searching 100 hectares of forest.
In a Telegram statement, Klymenko mentioned that the investigation leans towards the belief that the shooter acted as only one part of a larger coordinated effort.
The suspect’s father, currently on the front line, stated he had been separated from his son for some time but emphasized that the teenager held no anti-Ukrainian sentiments and was preparing to join the army.
