Manhunt for Ukraine's deposed president as he is accused of 'mass murder' of civilians after protester deaths - but he may already be safe in hands of Russian forces

Manhunt: The ousted President Viktor Yanukovych is wanted for mass murder, Ukrainian police said today

epa04097364 Newly-elected Speaker of Parliament Oleksandr Turchynov speaks during a session of the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev

A man shakes hands with Vitali Klitschko (right), head of the UDAR (Punch) party, in front of the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev

He said the international donor conference should involve representatives of the European Union, the United States and the International Monetary Fund. Ukraine faces state debt payments of around $6 billion in the remainder of this year.

In an address to the nation, Turchinov on Sunday spelled out the enormity of the task facing Ukraine's new leadership, and identified stabilizing the economy as a priority.

'Against the background of global economic recovery, the Ukrainian economy is heading into the abyss and is in a pre-default state,' he said.

'The task of the new government is to stop the country's slide into the abyss, to stabilize the exchange rate, guarantee the timely payment of salaries, pensions and stipends, and to regain the confidence of investors, promote the development of enterprises and the creation of new jobs.'

 

More...

• US warns Russia it would be a 'grave mistake' to send its military into Ukraine as its new leader says it wants to integrate with Europe
• House fit for a tyrant: Protestors storm the sprawling, luxury estate of Ukraine's fugitive president which has its own private zoo, golf course and is half the size of Monaco
• The revolution captured on camera: Striking images that followed weeks of turmoil across Ukraine and the final days that shaped it forever
• Ukraine says it needs $35 BILLION to avoid economy collapsing as Britain says it will 'pour taxpayers' money' in to help new government

The Ukrainian currency, the hyrvnia, fell about 2.4 per cent against the U.S. dollar in early trading on Monday. The news came after acting interior minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook profile that a hunt had begun for Yanukovich.

He said: 'An official case for the mass murder of peaceful citizens has been opened. Yanukovich and other people responsible for this have been declared wanted.'

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies said earlier they have no information about the whereabouts of Mr Yanukovych, who reportedly was seen in Sevastopol, a port on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula that is the home of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

But extraordinary claims have emerged that he was sneaked onto a Russian warship or plane in Sevastopol to flee possible legal action. A former senior aide to Vladimir Putin said that that a major operation was conducted in the port which is also headquarters to the Ukrainian navy.

Memorial: Photos of people reported to have died during clashes in Kiev are part of a makeshift memorial in the Little Ukraine section of the Manhattan borough of New York

Former economics advisor Andrey Illarionov claimed the secret evacuation of the fugitive leader involved Ukraine's defence minister Pavlo Lebedyev, who remains loyal to Yanukvych, and Russian forces in Sevastopol.

Illarionov said his sources indicated that it 'looks like Yanukovich managed to sneak out'.

Yanukovych fled the capital for eastern Ukraine after signing an agreement with the opposition to end a conflict that turned deadly. Ukraine's border service said he tried to fly out of the country Saturday from Donetsk but was stopped by their officials.

Opposition lawmaker Volodym Kurennoy said on his Facebook page that he had unconfirmed information that the president had been arrested in Crimea.

A woman puts down a flower onto a pathway of flowers placed in Independence Square for the anti-government demonstrators who were killed in clashes with police last week

A coffin with the body of a protester killed in recent clashes is carried through the crowd in Independence Square, the epicenter of the country's recent unrest

People flock to the Independence Square in Kiev as Ukraine's acting government issued a warrant Monday for the arrest of President Viktor Yanukovych

Yanukovich's whereabouts unknown, party denounces him

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Ukrainain news portal Liga.net reports that Sevastopol residents saw Yanukovych in the company of Russian marines. The claim could not be independently verified.

Spokesmen for the regional and national Interior Ministry and Security Service said today they had no such information.

Yanukovych set off a wave of protests by shelving an agreement with the EU in November and turning toward Russia, and the movement quickly expanded its grievances to corruption, human rights abuses and calls for Yanukovych's resignation.

The speaker of parliament assumed the president's powers on Sunday, but a presidential aide said that Yanukovych plans to stay in power.

A woman cries during a candlelight vigil service at St George Ukrainian Catholic Church in the Manhattan borough of New York. The service was held to pray for peace in the Ukraine

Ukrainian-Americans attach photographs of their fallen brethren at a shrine in front of the Ukrainian Mission to the United Nations in New York

A man argues with protesters breaking pieces from the communist era 'Monument to the Cheka - the soldiers of the Revolution' on Lybidska Square in Kiev

Bloodshed: Wounded people are seen after clashes with riot police in central Kiev on February 18

A portrait of Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is seen during a rally on Independence Square in downtown of Kiev today

The map shows the political divide that has developed since the country gained independence in 1991. Marked is the Black Sea city of Sevastopol, where the country's fugitive president is believed to have fled

People lay flowers and lit candles at one of the barricades heading to Kiev's Independence Square, the epicenter of the country's recent unrest

Anti-government protesters clash with police last week in Independence Square, despite a truce agreed between the Ukrainian president and opposition leaders in Kiev

THE BATTLE FOR LENIN: PRO-RUSSIAN UKRAINIANS FIGHT TO PROTECT THE SYMBOLS OF RUSSIAN RULE

The division between the West-facing west of Ukraine and the pro-Russian east has been brought into sharp focus at a number of statues across the country.

All across Ukraine statues of Lenin still stand - but while some have been trying to rip them down, some are fighting to keep them standing.

The recent upheaval has seen protesters smash portraits of former president Yanukovych and rip down statues of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in several towns and cities in the west.

But in the east of the country pro-Russian protesters have up positions to defend Lenin statues in Donetsk and Kharkiv.

Groups of pro-Russians wearing former Soviet Union army uniforms have been gathering to protect them.

Statues of Lenin across the former U.S.S.R. are seen as a symbol of Moscow's rule.

Galina Kravchuk, a middle-aged woman from Kiev, was holding a carnation. 'We are looking to Europe now. We have hope. We want to join Europe, ' she said.

Russia on Sunday recalled its ambassador in Ukraine for consultations on the 'deteriorating situation' in Kiev.

A day after Yanukovich fled, parliament named its new speaker, Turchinov, as interim head of state. An ally of the ousted leader's rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, he aims to swear in a government by Tuesday that can run things until a presidential election on May 25.

With battle-hardened, pro-Western protesters in control of Kiev and determined to hold their leaders to account, lawmakers rushed through decisions to cement their power, display their rejection of rampant corruption and bring to account officials who ordered police to fire on Independence Square.

But whoever takes charge as interim prime minister faces a huge challenge to satisfy popular expectations and will find an economy in deep crisis.
Scuffles in Crimea and some eastern cities between supporters of the new order in Kiev and those anxious to stay close to Moscow revived fears of separatism that a week earlier were focused on the west, where Ukrainian nationalists had disowned Yanukovich and proclaimed self-rule.

President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, was asked on U.S. television about the possibility of Russia sending troops to Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin had hoped Yanukovich would keep closely allied to Moscow.'That would be a grave mistake,' Rice said on Sunday.

'It's not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see a country split. It's in nobody's interest to see violence return and the situation escalate.'

Yanukovich's flight left Putin's Ukraine policy in tatters, on a day he had hoped eyes would be on the grand finale to the Sochi Olympics. The Kremlin leader spoke on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose foreign minister had brokered a short-lived truce in Kiev on Friday.

Mas murder: The body of a dead anti-government demonstrator killed in clashes with police is lifted above the crowd in Independence Square, on February 21

Victim: The body of a dead anti-government demonstrator killed in clashes with police is carried through the streets

A demonstrator holds up a chain and a riot police shield as protestors clash with police in the centre of Kiev on January 22

They agreed Ukraine's 'territorial integrity' must be maintained, Merkel's spokesman said.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague was asked if Russia might 'send in the tanks' to defend its interests among ethnic Russians in the east and on the Crimea peninsula, where Moscow bases its Black Sea Fleet. 'It would really not be in the interests of Russia to do any such thing,' he told the BBC.
Earlier this month, a Kremlin aide had warned that Moscow could intervene.

It is unlikely the United States and its allies in NATO would risk an outright military confrontation with Russia, but such echoes of the Cold War underline the high stakes in Ukraine, whose 46 million people and sprawling territory are caught in a geopolitical tug of war.

EU officials offered financial aid to a new government and to revive a trade deal that Yanukovich spurned under Russian pressure in November, sparking the protests that drove him from office.

In addition to any economic assistance the EU might offer, the United States has also promised help. Budgets are tight on both sides of the Atlantic, and international creditors may be wary of Yanukovich's opponents, whose previous spell in government was no economic success.

But a desire to avoid instability and back what looks to Western voters like a democratic movement menaced by Russian diktat may loosen purse strings, at least to tide Ukraine over until elections.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew encouraged Ukraine to begin discussions with the International Monetary Fund on an assistance package as soon as possible once a transitional government is in place in Kiev.

Lew spoke with Arseny Yatsenyuk, a member of Ukraine's interim leadership, while returning to Washington from the G20 meeting in Sydney, where there was broad support for an IMF-based package, according to a Treasury official

In Russia, where Putin had wanted Ukraine as a key part in a union of ex-Soviet states, the finance minister said the next tranche of a $15 billion loan package agreed to in December would not be paid, at least before a new government is formed.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to his office, told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry the opposition had 'seized power' by force by ignoring an EU-brokered truce that would have left Yanukovich in office for the time being.

But even lawmakers from Yanukovich's own party voted for his removal on Saturday and blamed him and his entourage for the crisis. Business 'oligarchs' also distanced themselves from a man long seen as their representative in the presidency.

In a mark of passions dividing Ukrainians along a historic fault line between Russian and Ukrainian cultures, local television in Ketch, in eastern Crimea, showed a crowd hauling down the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag in front of the town hall and hoisting the white, blue and red Russian tricolour.

In a hectic round of voting in parliament, lawmakers rushed in some crowd-pleasing measures against the old administration, conscious that those still occupying Independence Square - or the Maidan - remained deeply suspicious of the political class.

They stripped Yanukovich of his abandoned country home near Kiev, complete with ostrich farm and hot tubs, its brash opulence fuelling demands that he be held to account for stealing taxpayer billions.

Turchinov said a government should be in place by Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in Moscow police have detained dozens of people outside a courthouse where eight anti-government protesters are to be sentenced for their role in a 2012 protest against Vladimir Putin.

The defendants were found guilty last week on a range of charges following a trial seen as part of the Kremlin's efforts to stifle dissent. Some have been in jail for nearly two years.

Ahead of Monday's sentencing, hundreds of their supporters gathered outside the courthouse. Police detained 65 people who they said had blocked the road or tried to break through police lines.

The May 6, 2012, protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration for a third presidential term turned violent after police restricted access to Bolotnaya Square, across the river from the Kremlin, where the protesters had planned to gather.