A former Ukrainian nationalist lawmaker has died after being shot in the street in the western city of Lviv.
Iryna Farion sparked controversy in 2023 when she suggested that “true patriots” of Ukraine should not speak Russian under any circumstances.
The murder of a 60-year-old linguistics professor on Friday is being investigated and police say it may have been a targeted attack.
Her attacker has not yet been identified. Police said the power outage affected surveillance cameras in the area.
Lviv region governor Maksym Kozytskyi said on Telegram that Ms Farion died in hospital after the shooting.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said “this was not a spontaneous murder” and police were looking for a motive.
“We’ve had a number of versions. The main ones, I would say, are [linked to Farion’s] social and political activities and personal dislikes,” he said in a statement via the Telegram messaging service.
“We do not rule out the possibility that this murder had a deliberate element,” he added.
Chairperson Volodymyr Zelensky “Any act of violence must be condemned and whoever commits this attack must bear full responsibility,” he said on Telegram.
The hardline nationalist political party Svoboda (Freedom), of which Ms Farion is a member, has blamed Russia for the killing.
“Moscow shot itself in the temple for the Ukrainian language,” the newspaper declared.
In 2023, Ms. Farion said that true Ukrainian patriots should not speak Russian in any context, including on the front line, because it is the language of the aggressor state.
She described Russian as “the language of the enemy, the people who killed, discriminated, insulted and raped me”, adding: “How crazy do you have to be to fight in the Ukrainian army and speak Russian?”
Her words sparked a strong reaction in Ukraine at the time, with many accusing her of inciting hatred based on linguistic preferences.
She was expelled from a university in western Ukraine and is under investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
In May, the Lviv Court of Appeals reportedly issued a ruling reinstating her.
