NBC News
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SERGEY KOZLOV / EPA
Applause Erupts As Ukrainian Opposition Leader Freed From Prison
A
chief political rival of embattled Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych was freed Saturday from prison as the defiant leader
struggled to hold on to power as protesters seized control of the presidential palace and the parliament voted to remove him from office.
Former
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko waved to supporters from a car as she
was driven out of the hospital in the northeastern city if Kharkiv,
where she has been treated for a bad back while serving a seven-year
sentence since 2011.
"Our country can from this day on see the sun, because dictatorship fell," Tymoshenko said.
Parliament
members had voted to free her after Yanukovych fled the capital of Kiev
a day after announcing a pact with opposition leaders. Yanukovych said
he is traveling the country to seek advice and will “do everything to
stop the bloodshed” that left at least 77 dead, hundreds injured and
nearly collapsed the country into a civil war.
“I
am not planning to leave the country,” he said in a video televised on
local media. “I am not planning to resign. I am a legitimately elected
president. I was given guarantees of safety by all the international
mediators I worked with.”
Yanukovych
claimed his car was shot at, but that he didn’t fear for his life,
denouncing some of the opposition protesters as “bandits.”
“I
will not sign anything with the bandits who are terrorizing the whole
country and Ukrainian people. They are discrediting the country,” he
said on UBR television.
Presidential Press Service / AFP - Getty Images
In
another strike against the president, the parliament Saturday freed
Tymoshenko, who had been imprisoned on charges of abuse of office, which
the West had questioned. They also endorsed Oleksandr Turchynov as the
new speaker.
The apparent toppling of the pro-Russian looks likely to pull Ukraine away from Moscow’s orbit and closer to Europe.
.....
The New York Times
Ukraine’s Leader Flees the Capital; Elections Are Called
Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
KIEV,
Ukraine — Abandoned by his own guards and reviled across the Ukrainian
capital but still determined to recover his shredded authority,
President Viktor F. Yanukovych fled Kiev on Saturday to denounce what he
called a violent coup, as his official residence, his vast, colonnaded
office complex and other once impregnable centers of power fell without a
fight to throngs of joyous citizens stunned by their triumph.
While
Mr. Yanukovych’s nemesis, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko,
was released from a penitentiary hospital, Parliament found the
president unable to fulfill his duties and exercised its constitutional
powers to set an election for May 25 to select his replacement. But with
both Mr. Yanukovych and his Russian patrons speaking of a “coup”
carried out by “bandits” and “hooligans,” it was far from clear that the
day’s lightning-quick events would be the last act in a struggle that
has not just convulsed Ukraine but expanded into an East-West
confrontation reminiscent of the Cold War.
At
the presidential residence a short distance from the capital,
protesters carrying clubs and some wearing masks were in control of the
entryways Saturday morning and watched as thousands of citizens strolled
through the grounds in wonder. “This commences a new life for Ukraine,”
said Roman Dakus, a protester-turned-guard, who was wearing a ski
helmet and carrying a length of pipe as he blocked a doorway at the
compound. “This is only a start,” he added. “We need now to make a new
structure and a new system, a foundation for our future, with rights for
everybody, and we need to investigate who ordered the violence.”
With
the riot police they battled for days having disappeared, the
protesters claimed to be in charge of security for the city. There was
no sign of looting, either in the city proper or in the presidential
compound.
A
pugnacious Mr. Yanukovych appeared on television Saturday afternoon,
apparently from the eastern city of Kharkiv, near Ukraine’s eastern
border with Russia, saying he had been forced to leave the capital
because of a “coup,” and that he had not resigned, and had no plans to.
He said indignantly that his car had been fired upon as he drove away.
“I
don’t plan to leave the country. I don’t plan to resign,” he said,
speaking in Russian rather than Ukrainian, the country’s official
language. “I am a legitimately elected president.” He added: “What is
happening today, mostly, it is vandalism, banditism and a coup d’état.
This is my assessment and I am deeply convinced of this. I will remain
on the territory of Ukraine.” He also complained of “traitors” among his
own former supporters but he declined to name them.
Regional
governors from eastern Ukraine met in Kharkiv and adopted a resolution
resisting the authority of Parliament. They said that until matters were
resolved, “we have decided to take responsibility for safeguarding the
constitutional order, legality, citizens’ rights and their security on
our territories.”
One of the few institutions still taking orders from the president was the official trilingual website of the Ukrainian presidency,
which posted a transcript of his defiant television address. But, by
evening, the text had appeared only in Ukrainian and Russian, suggesting
that his English translator had perhaps jumped ship.
The
former nerve center of Mr. Yanukovych’s power, the huge compound of the
presidential administration, just a few hundred yards from Independence
Square in Kiev, was empty Saturday aside from protesters who patrolled
its courtyard and blocked off a nearby street to prevent residents
swarming into the building. Ukrainian flags flying outside had all been
lowered to half-mast, in honor of those killed by police officers and
snipers on Thursday.
Mr.
Yanukovych said in his television appearance that he would be traveling
to the southeastern part of Ukraine to talk to his supporters — a plan
that carried potentially ominous overtones, in that the southeast is the
location of the Crimea, the historically Russian section of the country
that is the site of a Russian naval base.
The president’s departure from Kiev, just a day after a peace deal with the opposition
that he had hoped would keep him in office until at least December,
capped three months of streets protests and a week of frenzied violence
in the capital that left more than 75 protesters dead. It turned what
began in November as a street protest driven by pro-Europe chants and
nationalist songs into a momentous but still ill-defined revolution.
With
nobody clearly in charge, other than the so far remarkably disciplined
fighting squads, lieutenants of Ms. Tymoshenko moved to fill the power
vacuum. With Oleksandr V. Turchynov, a former acting prime minister and
close ally of Ms. Tymoshenko, presiding over the Parliament, her
Fatherland party seemed to be in charge, at least temporarily.
.....
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