Google – AFP, Dmitry Zaks (AFP), 22 February 2014
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Newly freed
Ukrainian opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko speaks at Independence
Square on
February 22, 2014, moments after parliament voted to hold early
presidential
elections in May (AFP, Bulent Kilic)
|
Kiev —
Ukrainian protesters seized control of the capital Kiev on Saturday in a
historic cascade of events that saw jailed opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko walk
free while marginalised President Viktor Yanukovych defiantly claimed to still
wield power.
The
situation in the ex-Soviet nation -- deeply divided between aspirations towards
the European Union and loyalty to Russia -- was still fluid and uncertainty
reigned over whether the opposition had definitively triumphed over Yanukovych
on a day of high drama exactly three months into the country's crisis.
But there
was clearly no more evidence of the brutal violence that had charred the heart
of Kiev for much of this week and left nearly 100 people dead.
 |
Yulia
Tymoshenko leaving hospital in
Kharkiv (Batkivshchyna Party Press
Service
Pool/AFP, Inna Petrikova)
|
They and
other city residents gawped in awe and anger at the ostentatious luxury
Yanukovych had built up inside a private estate that featured everything from a
private zoo to a replica galleon floating on an artificial waterway.
Yanukovych
gave a television interview from the pro-Russian eastern bastion city of
Kharkiv denouncing the "coup" against him and branding his political
foes "bandits" -- comments that won firm support from his backers in
Moscow.
But the
army issued a statement saying it "will in no way become involved in the
political conflict" and the police force declared itself in support of
"the people" and "rapid change".
British
Foreign Secretary William Hague sounded an encouraging note about the
"extraordinary developments" in Ukraine.
"Events
in the last 24 hours show the will of Ukrainians to move towards a different
future, and ensure that the voices of those who have protested courageously
over several months are heard," Hague said in a statement.
The
parliament in Kiev stepped into the power vacuum left by Yanukovych's departure
by voting to oust the embattled president and setting new elections for May 25.
Lawmakers
followed that up with an equally dramatic move ordering the release of
Tymoshenko -- a former premier and stalwart supporter of close EU ties who
remained Yanukovych's nemesis even when she was sent to prison in 2011 on a
seven-year sentence for "abuse of power".
 |
Anti-government
protesters react after the
vote of the Ukrainian Parliament as they
rally outside the parliament building in
Kiev on February 22, 2014 (AFP,
Bulent
Kilic)
|
"You
are heroes, you are the best of Ukraine," she said before breaking down in
tears.
Priests
conducted a religious ceremony for one of the protesters killed this week
before she arrived, and many in the crowd lit up their mobile phones to create
a sea of light.
The US
government welcomed Tymoshenko's release and wisher her "a speedy recovery
as she seeks the appropriate medical treatment that she has long needed and
sought" while incarcerated.
The
developments showed the balance of power in Ukraine swinging in the
opposition's favour and seemingly superseding a Western-brokered pact
Yanukovych had signed just a day earlier with the opposition to resolve the
country's bloodiest conflict since its independence in 1991.
The crisis
had erupted in November when Yanukovych had dumped a pact promising closer ties
with the European Union in favour of hewing closer to Soviet-era master Russia.
-
Yanukovych refuses to resign -
"This
is a political knockout for Yanukovych," charismatic
former-boxer-turned-opposition-leader Vitali Klitschko said in a statement Saturday.
"Yanukovych
is no longer president."
But
Yanukovych vowed flatly to fight any attempt to topple him.
 |
Anti-government
protesters stand guard in
front of the parliament building in Kiev on
February
22, 2014 (AFP, Bulent Kilic)
|
Yanukovych
added with a hint of outrage that "everything happening today can
primarily be described as vandalism, banditry and a coup d'etat".
Yet the
president's grasp on power appeared limited on Saturday. Government buildings
stood without police protection and baton-armed protesters dressed in military
fatigues wandered freely across his once-fortified compound.
"We
have taken the perimeter of the president's residence under our control for
security reasons," Mykola Velichkovich of the opposition's self-declared
'Independence Square defence unit' told AFP.
Thousands
of mourners meanwhile brought carnations and roses to dozens of locations
across central Kiev at which people were shot dead by police in a week of
carnage.
Coffins
draped with Ukraine's blue-and-yellow passed from shoulder to shoulder through
the crowd before being taken outside the city for burial.
Thousands
of residents also took their first-ever tour of Yanukovych's lavish private
residence just north of Kiev, gaping at a zoo, a galleon and other
extravagances the leader had enjoyed behind high walls.
"I am
in shock," a retired military servicewoman named Natalia Rudenko said as
she inspected the president's rare pheasant collection and a banquet hall built
inside the galleon replica.
"In a
country with so much poverty, how can one person have so much?"
- Russia
unsettled -
 |
People
cheer in front of the parliament
building in Kiev on February 22, 2014
(AFP,
Bulent Kilic)
|
Russa's
foreign ministry accused the opposition of "submitting itself to armed
extremists and looters whose actions pose a direct threat to the sovereignty
and constitutional order of Ukraine".
Yanukovych's
ruling Regions Party, that had previously pushed Ukraine closer toward Russia,
stood in disarray amid mass defections by lawmakers to opposition ranks.
More than
40 lawmakers had already quit the Regions Party -- once in control of 208 votes
in the 450-seat Rada -- since the deadly unrest first erupted on Tuesday.
Deputies
also named Tymoshenko ally Arsen Avakov as interior minister in place of
Vitaliy Zakharchenko -- a figure hated by the opposition who is blamed for
ordering the police to open fire on unarmed protesters.
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