RIVNE, Ukraine (CNN) -- Camouflage-clad militiamen hoist AK-47 assault rifles to their shoulders and blast off a 21-shot salute.

As the muzzles flash, another squad of ultra-nationalist fighters chants, "Our hero is not dead. Glory to him."

A few yards away, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest swings an incense burner. A mother and father weep over the coffin of their dead son.

The killing of radical nationalist leader Oleksandr Muzychko, also known by his nickname "Sasha the White" was enough to make shaven-headed, hardened paramilitary men cry.
Photos: Crisis in Ukraine Photos: Crisis in Ukraine

"He was like a brother to me and my comrades. But that bastard Putin murdered him," said Anatoly Valsyuk, as he choked back tears.

Valsyuk served under Muzychko, who was commander in western Ukraine for the "Right Sector," a recently formed alliance of right-wing and nationalist political parties and militia forces.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said its special agents killed Muzychko Monday night here in the western city of Rivne as he resisted arrest. The Interior Ministry says he was a gangster.

But Right Sector leaders are calling for the Interior Minister Arsen Avakov to resign and face murder charges over Muzychko's death. They say the Avakov is one of Ukraine's corrupt old-guard politicians and that he and his men may even have been taking orders from Moscow.
...
Muzychko and the Right Sector are credited with playing a lead role in this winter's protests that toppled Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovitch. The nationalist paramilitary militias won admiration from many ordinary Ukrainians for their stiff discipline and determined street-fighting tactics.

Mourner Svetlana Bilyus, an English-speaking interpreter, had made the three-and-a-half hour drive from the capital to Rivne to be at the funeral Wednesday.

She said she met Muzychko only once, at the barricades around Kiev's emblematic Independence Square or "Maidan," the scene of the deadliest clashes between anti-government protestors and Yanukovitch's security forces in January and February.

"He was a national hero. He's an inspiration for millions of Ukrainian people, especially young people. He's a local Robin Hood," Bilyus said