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A suspect in the murder of former Ukrainian lawmaker and linguist Iryna Farion was detained in Dnipro, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on July 25, citing Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko.
The detained suspect is an 18-year-old man, Zelensky said. The investigation is ongoing.
An unidentified man opened fire on Farion, 60, on the street outside her home in Lviv on the evening of July 19. She underwent an operation but was pronounced dead later that night.
"The task to detain (the suspect) was challenging. Over the past few days, hundreds of specialists from the National Police of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine, and other services worked to solve the murder," Zelensky wrote on his Telegram channel.
Klymenko said that the search operation lasted 139 hours. Law enforcement agencies inspected about 100 hectares of forest and eventually managed to track down the suspected shooter in Dnipro.
"With his photo, it was a matter of time: smart surveillance cameras 'caught' him everywhere," Klymenko said.
According to the minister, the 18-year-old suspect is a resident of Dnipro. While preparing for the crime, he rented at least three apartments in Lviv.
A day earlier, a video allegedly capturing Farion's murder started spreading on Russian social media.
The pro-Kremlin telegram channel Readovka claimed that the NS/WP (National-Socialism/White Power) group had taken responsibility for Farion's murder. Readovka also described the NS/WP as "neo-Nazi."
The Ukrainian police are examining the claims published on Russian social media, a police spokesperson told the media.
Law enforcement agencies previously said they do not rule out the involvement of Russian actors in the murder of the former lawmaker and linguist.
Farion was a linguistics professor who previously served in the parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party. She was considered a controversial figure in Ukraine, among other reasons, due to her incendiary statements on the use of the Russian language.
Kate Tsurkan
