Ministry of Internal Affairs of UkraineAn 18-year-old man has been arrested in southeastern Ukraine on suspicion of shooting dead controversial former parliamentarian and linguistics professor Iryna Farion.
After a massive hunt by investigators, the teenager was found in Dnipro, more than 900 kilometers (550 miles) from the western city of Lviv, where the attack took place.
Faryon, 60, became well known in Ukraine last year after sparking outcry in Ukraine when he said true Ukrainian patriots should not speak Russian on any occasion because it was the language of an “aggressor state.”
She was expelled from the university after being accused of inciting hatred and reinstated by a Lviv court this year.
Her murder is considered premeditated and although CCTV cameras failed to capture the shooting outside her home, they did reportedly capture an image of the suspect, described as a slender young man.
Farion’s funeral drew a large crowd in Lviv on Monday. She served as a parliamentarian for two years until 2014, appeared regularly on television, and her YouTube blog attracted more than 300,000 subscribers.
The motive for the attack was unclear and President Volodymyr Zelensky said detectives were considering all possible investigative leads, including a possible Russian role in the murder.
One report suggested that a neo-Nazi group with ties to Russia may have been involved, and a member of the nationalist Freedom Party claimed that whoever fired the shots had taken orders from Russia.
There is no sign of Russian involvement, although pro-Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan noted on social media that Faryon had sought the “total annihilation” of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population and had itself been wiped out.
Getty ImagesUkrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klimenko said on Thursday that the teenage suspect had been detained at his home in Dnipro, adding that he had rented at least three apartments in Lviv before the shooting.
A local website identified the suspect as a young football player who participated in a tournament last month.
The interior minister paid tribute to investigators and crime experts who “worked continuously for 139 hours” as they painstakingly examined the gunman’s escape route and 100 hectares of forest.
In a statement posted on the messaging service Telegram, Klimenko said the investigation “tends to believe that the gunman was only the perpetrator” and suggested that the incident may have been coordinated by others.
The suspect’s father told Radio Liberty that he was on the front line and had not seen his son for some time.
However, he said the teenager had no anti-Ukrainian views, was a patriot and had completed courses to prepare for military service.
