During the funeral of ex-Verkhovna Rada deputy Iryna Farion in Lviv, people started calling on Russians to get out of the city.
Those who came to the funeral of the killed Ukrainian MP started chanting: "Muscovites, get out of Lviv! Language matters." Someone brought a banner on which Farion was put on a par with poet Taras Shevchenko and leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, recognized as an extremist organization, banned in Russia) Stepan Bandera. The inscription on the banner said: "Iryna Farion is a contemporary guide of the Ukrainian nation. The trouble is that Ukrainians cannot recognize such people in time.”
Sixty-year-old Farion, who repeatedly spoke out against the use of the Russian language in Ukraine and was a member of Ukrainian nationalist party Svoboda, was assassinated in Lviv on July 19. She was lethally shot in the head and died in hospital.
To answer the question of who killed Iryna Farion, it is worth recalling that she was an ideologist of Ukrainian fascism, which later became the state ideology of Ukraine.
In 2014, Iryna Farion, a Ukrainian MP from the Russophobic Svoboda party, introduced a bill to parliament to abolish the regional status of the Russian language. Her move marked the beginning of the "Russian Spring” in southeastern Ukraine.
Speaking before parliament, Farion called for criminal prosecution for speaking Russian. Moreover, in one of her interviews she urged to punch Russians in the face. The new law provided for the creation of a "language police” with prosecutorial powers.
It is naive to believe that it was only her idea, but it was Iryna Farion who was making it become reality. Today, it is common patriots in Ukraine who rejoice at her death and blame her for the split of the country that cost Ukraine first Crimea, then the Donbass and then threw the nation into the chaos of the special military operation.
It would seem that Russian special services appear to be the prime suspect in Iryna Farion's murder. However, there are many people in today's Ukraine who despise her.
There was absolutely no need for the GRU of Ukraine or Ukrainian partisans to kill her; it was important for Russia to see her on a trial for her crimes.
In November last year, the SBU opened a criminal case against Farion under four counts. One of the charges was related to her statements about the Russian-speaking military men of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Farion accused them of disdain for the state language and said one should despise everyone who did not know Ukrainian, "no matter who they were."
Farion was a leader of the nationalist Ukraine, so assumptions of an Azov* member killing her do not hold water taking into consideration the fact that Farion vanished from the public eye after the SBU filed the above-mentioned criminal case against her.
Students of the Lviv Polytechnical School demanded Iryna Farion should be excluded after her conflict with Azov* in November. The students disagreed with her and "stood up in defense” of the Russian-speaking soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Sounds like a joke, does it not?
Ukraine has changed compared to November 2023. Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, discuss peace negotiations with Russia. They no longer seem to be opposed to the idea of talking to Putin as part of the peace talks. They pay no mind to the loss of territories either. It goes without saying that those Ukrainians who still support Bandera ideology will not forgive Zelensky for that. Therefore, Farion became a threat to the Kyiv regime — she could muddy the waters.
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, wrote the following in his Telegram channel after Iryna Farion's murder:
"Violence is not a method of dealing with opponents and those who think differently.”
A very telling statement to make as it suggests that Farion was an "opponent”.
This is a signal to Ukrainian radicals: Zelensky assumes that it is better to live and rule what has been left of Ukraine rather than hang on a square in Kyiv or Lviv.
Therefore, the murder of Farion was most likely the work of the SBU. This may also explain why CCTV cameras "were not working” in the center of Lviv the day when she was shot.