Trial may fail without instrument of crime: expert on Iryna Farion's murder case

He expressed this opinion on Espreso TV.

"Indeed, he acted professionally; there are no questions. Please look at the fact that the entire state machinery — a large number of employees from the National Police and the Security Service of Ukraine — were deployed to solve this case in hot pursuit, but it took almost five days and, they say, 130 hours to find the suspect. Under normal circumstances, for example, a district police department or maybe a regional department would handle it, but here the whole country worked on it, and only on the fifth day were they able to detain this person. That is, he acted really professionally, or he is very, very, very talented and was able to calculate and predict his steps, or someone helped him from the outside, assisted him, prompted him," analyzed the expert.

Stupak admits that he was surprised by the suspect's behavior in the courtroom, as he was completely calm: "You look at his fingers — they are calm, his eyes are calm. It seems that in 5-20 minutes, everything will be over, and he will go home to play his PlayStation. It seems that he is completely confident in himself and his actions, and it is really very interesting."

According to the expert, the gun used to shoot Iryna Farion has not yet been found.

"Without the murder weapon, the trial may fall apart, meaning that the court will definitely demand that the investigating authorities present the murder weapon as proof of guilt. There is a bullet, there is a shell casing, but no gun. My guess as to why the suspect was so calm is that he knows or guesses that the gun will never be found. And without the instrument of the crime, it is difficult, extremely difficult to prove the suspect's guilt," explained the military expert.

Iryna Farion's murder

On July 19, at about 19:30, an unknown assailant shot Iryna Farion in Lviv. The Lviv regional police confirmed this and reported that a special police operation was underway to detain him.

Iryna Farion was taken to St. Panteleimon Hospital of the First Territorial Medical Association of Lviv. The woman was in critical condition, late in the evening of July 19, doctors reported that she was in a brain coma and on artificial lung ventilation. Doctors fought for her life to the last.

On Espreso, Lviv City Council member Andirian Hutnyk provided details of the attempted assassination of Iryna Farion. He said that an unknown young man of 20-25 years old "was wearing some kind of hat". He fired a shot at her head with a firearm, the bullet hit her temple, the shot was from a gun without a silencer.

Subsequently, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said that the attack on Iryna Farion was classified as an attempted murder. The Prosecutor General's Office noted that a pre-trial investigation had been launched.

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy also reacted to the attempted murder of Iryna Farion. He said that all the necessary forces of the National Police of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine are involved to establish the circumstances of this crime. "Obviously, any violence deserves only condemnation and everyone who is guilty of this attack must be held fully accountable," Zelenskyy wrote.

Former MP, linguist and professor at Lviv Polytechnic Iryna Farion died in hospital in Lviv. The shot to her head on the evening of 19 July was fatal.