The Ukrainian police are examining unverified claims spread on Russian social media linking the murder of former Ukrainian lawmaker and linguist Iryna Farion to a Russian neo-Nazi group, a police spokesperson told Suspilne on July 25.
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 and was pronounced dead later that night.
Russian Telegram channels published on July 24 a video of what they purported to be the footage of the murder.
The pro-Kremlin telegram channel Readovka was one of the first to post the alleged video of the crime, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.
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."
"We discovered this information yesterday (July 24) while monitoring social media. We are currently examining whether it will be useful for the investigation," police spokesperson Svitlana Dobrovolska told Suspilne.
Kate Tsurkan
Many among the Russian far-right believe that NS/WP is a project of the Russian secret services, whose goal is to attract sympathetic young people to illegal actions to arrest them and neutralize or control them, RFE/RL reported.
The authenticity of the footage cannot be immediately verified, as it reveals very little. It includes audio of a woman screaming and a gunshot. For a brief moment, a shot of the surroundings is visible, which RFE/RL said resembles the location of Farion's murder, the yard next to her house.
The NS/WP Telegram channel did not publish the video, but posted a link to another channel, Oderint Dum Metuant ("Let them hate, as long as they are afraid" in Latin), which included an almost 4-minute video with the text called the "manifesto of the Ukrainian autonomous revolutionary racist" and the alleged footage of Farion's murder.
The manifesto's author calls Farion a "pest and racial traitor" and claims responsibility for her murder.
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.
Ukraine's police put out a search warrant for an unidentified young man on July 21 who may have been involved in the murder.
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