Gunman shoots and fatally wounds a nationalist former Ukrainian parliament member known for her outspoken campaigning in favor of the Ukrainian language.

Police have launched a manhunt for the man who allegedly shot the 60-year-old Irina Farion on a street in the city of Lviv. The case is characterized “attempted murder”said Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko.

The president Volodymyr Zelensky he said he was regularly informed about the investigations into the arrest of the gunman and condemned any form of violence.

A linguist, Farion joined the nationalist Svoboda (“Freedom”) party in 2005 and was elected to parliament for the first and last time in 2012. She was also a member of the Lviv regional council. She became known for her campaigns to promote the Ukrainian language and her disparaging comments about Russian-speaking public sector officials. In 2018, when Ukraine was fighting pro-Russian separatists who had seized territory in eastern Ukraine, he called on his compatriots to “punch all Russian speakers in the jaw.”

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Farion even denounced the Russian-speaking fighters of the Azov Battalion who defended Mariupol for many months.

Although Ukrainian is the only official language in Ukraine, for many residents Russian is their mother tongue, a legacy of the Soviet era. Linguistics has always been a thorny issue for the country, and the parliament has adopted laws to promote the Ukrainian language in government and service agencies.