KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Thousands of Ukrainians chanted "Hero!" and sang the national anthem on Sunday, as a coffin carrying a protester who was killed in last week's clashes with police was carried through the streets of the capital, underscoring the rising tensions in the country's two-month political crisis.
Mikhail Zhiznevsky, 25, was one of three protesters who died in clashes Wednesday.
"He could have been my fiancé, but he died defending my future so that I will live in a different Ukraine," said Nina Uvarov, a 25-year-old student from Kiev who wept as Zhiznevsky's body was carried out of St. Michael's Cathedral.
The opposition contends that Zhiznevsky and another activist were shot by police in an area where demonstrators had been throwing rocks and firebombs at riot police for several days. The government claims the two demonstrators were killed with hunting rifles, which they say police do not carry.
Zhiznevsky's body was then carried several hundred yardsto Independence Square in central Kiev, where protesters have established a large tent camp and held demonstrations around the clock since early December. Crowds shouted "Yanukovych is a murderer!" and "Down with the criminal," a reference to Yanukovych's run-ins with the law during his youth. The coffin was then carried to the site of Zhiznevsky's death at barricades near the Ukrainian parliament.
Meanwhile, protests against President Viktor Yanukovych continued to engulf the country, now beginning to spread to central and eastern Ukraine, the leader's support base.
The protests began in late November after Yanukovych shelved a long-awaited agreement to deepen ties with the European Union, but they have been increasingly gripped by people seeking more radical action, even as moderate opposition leaders have pleaded for the violence to end.