Nationalists threaten Ukrainian top cop with 'revenge' over far-right leader murder
Ukrainian nationalist party Right Sector has announced it holds the acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accountable for the death of notorious radical militant Aleksandr Muzychko and will avenge it, Ukrainian media reports.
“We will take revenge on Arsen Avakov for the death of our brother,” said Rovno coordinator of the Right Sector Roman Koval, as cited by charivne.info news portal. “The shooting of Sashko Bilyi [Muzychko’s nom de guerre] is an assassination ordered by the minister. Muzychko never received any notices concerning criminal offences and was never summoned anywhere.”
Earlier, Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bilyi, was proclaimed dead after a police raid against his gang in Rovno, western Ukraine.
During the raid, Muzychko opened fire wounding an officer. He continued shooting even despite being injured in the leg, the Interior Ministry said.
“When [the police] attempted to detain him, they found out he was wounded. The medics who arrived at the scene proclaimed Muzychko dead,” First Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Yevdokimov said.
The three bodyguards, who were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and Makarov pistols, were detained by police.
The Right Sector representatives say that the Interior Ministry’s version of Muzychko’s death is an “outright lie.” They claim the notorious militant had his hands tied so he could not possibly shoot back at the police.
The nationalist party has not specified how exactly they are going to avenge their leader’s death.
'Take him off stage'
The special operation in which Muzychko was killed was carried out on orders and under direct control of the head of the Ukrainian intelligence, Valentin Nalivaichenko, a former senior Ukrainian intelligence official told RIA Novosti.
“The goal of the operation was not to capture, but to neutralize Muzychko, to take him off stage,” the source said, adding that Muzychko started to discredit the new Ukrainian authorities and to interpret the orders of the Right Sector leadership in his own way.
Following the coup in Ukraine, which Muzychko supported, he refused to give up the weapons which he occasionally used to intimidate local officials in Rovno.
Several videos of Muzychko have recently gone viral on YouTube, including ones where the radical nationalist leader lashed out at a local prosecutor, threatened local authorities with an AK-47 and made openly anti-Semitic statements.
According to the Interior Ministry, charges of hooliganism and obstructing law enforcement agencies had been filed against Muzychko March 8, and on March 12 Muzychko was put on the Ukrainian police’s wanted list.
In Russia, Muzychko was also put on international wanted list for allegedly torturing and murdering at least 20 captured Russian soldiers during the first Chechen War in 1994-1995.
