Around a thousand mourners came to honor assassinated militia commander Aleksey Mozgovoi in Alchevsk, where his Prizrak (Ghost) Brigade militia was headquartered on Sunday.
Relatives, fellow militia members and friends spoke at a microphone at the event, expressing their grief and condolences.
"As a commander of the Prizrak Brigade, Alexei Mozgovoi several times said that he will mercilessly fight organized crime in Alchevsk, for which he received many threats from various criminal elements," a source in the investigative group told Russian new agency Interfax on Saturday.
Denis Pushilin, a representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic at the Minsk talks said that he believes that the murder was an attempt to destabilize the Lugansk republic.
"This was a calculated attempt to destabilize the situation from the inside. We all knew and witnessed Mozgovoi's complicated relationship between the republic's leadership. However, they always found a common language, and naturally, it would have been pointless to resort to any methods for such a solution," Pushilin told RIA Novosti.
A representative of the Ukrainian Presidentian Administration, Oleksandr Motuzyanik, claimed that the assassination was an issue of militias' "internal strife."
