A political murder that shook, then united, Ukraine

An 18-year-old gunman with possible ties to Russia shot a highly controversial Ukrainian nationalist, Iryna Farion. Her life's work divided Ukraine, yet her death did the opposite.

Iryna Farion, a 60-year-old Ukrainian nationalist and linguist, was a person that was hard to feel neutral about. 

Having spent her life advocating for radical solutions to Ukraine’s struggles with national identity and language, it seemed like she infuriated millions of people every time she opened her mouth. 

But on July 19, after a gunman killed her with two shots to the head outside her home in Lviv, society’s verdict was clear: she deserved to live. Despite the growing sense of fatigue and wartime tensions, people shared an understanding that murdering someone for their rhetoric was deeply un-Ukrainian. 

So who was Iryna Farion, why was an 18-year-old boy arrested as a suspect, and why did Russian neo-nazis publically take responsibility for her murder? 

A screenshot from a video on Iryna Farion’s YouTube channel.

Farion was one of the most controversial public figures in Ukraine. 

A prominent linguist and an award-winning academic, she authored over 200 papers and 4 monographs on language-related topics. She taught Ukrainian language, literature, and philology for nearly three decades, most recently at the Lviv Polytechnic University. She defended her doctoral thesis on the social status of the Old Ukrainian language in the 14th-17th centuries. 

In 2012, Farion became a lawmaker in Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, with the nationalist party Svoboda, which won 10,44% of the vote. This election was Svoboda’s only triumph, and it was short-lived: in 2014, the party didn’t even gain the 5% threshold to enter parliament. This was the first and last time that a far-right party entered Verkhovna Rada. (Feel free to use this fact when discussing whether Ukraine has a far-right problem, especially with the French.) 

Throughout her public career, Farion aggressively advocated against the Russian language and those who spoke Russian. As an MP, she often ridiculed Russian-speaking politicians, including Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who famously couldn’t muster a single sentence in Ukrainian without making a fool of himself.   

Centuries of Russian colonialism weaponized language and made it into a highly sensitive issue, so Farion’s strong rhetoric struck a nerve. 

From the Russian Empire to Stalin to Putin, every Russian government in history has tried to eradicate the Ukrainian language and replace it with Russian. There were numerous official bans on the use of the Ukrainian language in documents, books, schools, and official communications. Despite the work of Ukraine’s intelligentsia, most of whom were either killed or sent to gulags, Russia managed to russify generations of Ukrainians. The eastern and southern regions of Ukraine – including my hometown of Kherson –  suffered the most, partially because of their proximity to Russia. 

After Ukrainians kicked out Kremlin-linked president Viktor Yanukovych during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, many people began speaking exclusively Ukrainian as an act of political resistance. 

Russia’s full-scale invasion accelerated this trend. A December 2023 poll showed 65% of Ukrainians speak Ukrainian at home, a 15% increase from 2022. My husband and I also made the switch recently. 

In light of these historical traumas, many perceive Farion as one of the great defenders of the Ukrainian language who’s been righting the historical wrong long before it was trendy. 

Yet her approach was highly divisive and alienating. 

In 2023, she said in an interview that she didn’t consider Russian-speaking soldiers (of which there are thousands) real Ukrainians. 

She also said Russia’s near-total destruction of Mariupol, where tens of thousands of Ukrainians were killed during a siege, was “karmic”. 

“Everything is karmic,” Farion later explained in an interview to popular Ukrainian YouTuber Emma Antoniuk. 

“Everything that we see today is about cause and effect. Who had our society been voting for?” Farion asked, before listing Russia-connected politicians who’ve been elected to local and national governments over the years. Many of them, like former mayor of Kherson Volodymyr Saldo, played a key role in Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory by collaborating with Russian officials. 

When the interviewer said that those Ukrainians were traumatized by Russian propaganda and Russia was to blame for it, Farion objected: “Really? Russia is at fault? Did these people lose their brains? We live in a time of open information, time of the internet, and a large amount of books that one can read. People have to learn to take responsibility for their actions.” 

The hyper-focus on personal responsibility seemed to drive many of Farion’s controversial views. 

In that same interview with Antoniuk, she spoke about the “vulgarization of feminism” and her objection to the entire movement. She believed women were at fault for allowing society to mistreat them, be it through professional glass ceilings, unpaid domestic work, or violence.  

“Why do they (women) allow that? If you have dignity, you will protect it. Where is (their) dignity?” she said. “You need to learn how to take charge of your own life. It’s the same with Ukraine today. We’re dependent on someone for weapons, why?” 

Farion was shot just before 7:30 p.m. outside of her home while she was waiting for a taxi to go visit her daughter. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery. After hours on artificial ventilation and in a deep cerebral coma, she died around 11 p.m.  

In typical Ukrainian fashion, many immediately pointed the finger at Russia. 

The Ministry of Internal Affairs said they considered personal animosity and Farion’s socio-political activities as possible motives, adding that the crime could have been a hit. Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) said Russia’s involvement was possible. 

A national manhunt lasted for nearly a week. On July 25, 18-year-old Viacheslav Zinchenko was arrested in Dnipro, a city on the other side of Ukraine.

And then the story took another turn when on the day of arrest, Russian telegram channels reported that a Russian extremist group NS/WP – National-Socialism/White Power – took responsibility for the assassination, publishing what looked like the video of the murder. 

Not much information is available about NS/WP. Russian outlet Mediazona reported that many unrelated neo-nazi groups and individuals in Russia have used this abbreviation in the 2000s. Thousands of racist attacks have taken place in Russia since then, with far-right radicals, many of whom are minors, assaulting and killing people of color and other minorities. The group has become a subculture movement.

NS/WP resurfaced in 2022 when Russian security services, the FSB,  said it arrested a group of extremists who were preparing an assassination of famous Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov. FSB said its Ukrainian counterpart, SBU, was behind the plot. Many questioned the legitimacy of this story; Russian security services are known for controlling extremist and so-called opposition groups to use them for the Kremlin’s objectives. 

The murder of Farion is a peculiar case. 

It makes sense why a Russian far-right group would want Farion dead, even though her politics were also very far-right. She insulted gays, Jews, and feminists, but she loved Ukraine and hated Russia and everything that was Russian. It’s a case of aggressive nationalism in Russia against a defensive one in Ukraine. 

Zinchenko reportedly followed Russian far-right groups on social media, including the NS/WP. But after speaking with Zinchenko personally, the deputy head of Ukraine’s National Police said the boy was “absolutely pro-Ukrainian”. 

“He respects Ukraine. He loves Ukraine, and he thinks he did the right thing. He believes that there is no need to divide Ukrainian society. He had his motives,” the police official said, adding that Zinchenko had googled the locations and personal details of pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians after the murder in preparation for future attacks. 

So what were his motives? To kill anyone who divided Ukrainian society? If that’s the case, why get entangled with the Russian extremists online? 

Police also said they believe Zinchenko was the executioner, not the mastermind behind the hit. So who was? And if Moscow is involved, what brings a young Ukrainian patriot to work for the other side? 

After Farion’s death came the public mourning. Countless social media posts highlighted her patriotic achievements. Her supporters claimed she was killed for being a real patriot, and that the Ukrainian language itself was attacked that day. 

Half the country seemed to forget the objectively insulting things she had said. And amid this national show of amnesia, the other half kept repeating something important over and over: I never liked her. I didn’t agree with her. But this is a tragedy. 

I saw dozens of such posts on my social feeds in the days after her murder. I didn’t see anyone celebrating her death, but I did see people calling for accountability as soon as possible.

Of course, my social media bubble is not national polling, but it is a reflection of Ukraine’s civil society. And I think its reaction is very telling. 

Farion was dearly loved and deeply hated by millions of people. But what matters is that she was a Ukrainian. A controversial one, but still an essential part of this country’s story, a part of this enormous community that is united under the belief that Ukraine must be free, democratic, and prosperous. 

Killing someone for their beliefs is a Russian method, not ours. 

“This once again shows that the Russians…know us very poorly,” journalist Vitaliy Portnikov said in an interview. 

“We are united, despite political views from liberal to ultra-radical and ultra-conservative, by the idea of ​​Ukrainian statehood, because we understand that we are all in the same boat. They simply do not understand that no one will fight about the figure of Iryna Farion, but everyone will be gripped with horror and irritation over her death.” 

We still don’t know if Russians are behind her murder. But if they are, I am proud to say that their plan to break Ukrainian unity failed spectacularly.