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Ukraine president Viktor Yanukovych takes sick leave amid calls for resignation
Ukraine on the brink as President Viktor Yanukovych takes sick leave amid calls for resignation
(about 9 hours later)
Ukraine's embattled president Viktor Yanukovych is taking sick leave as the country's political crisis continues without signs of resolution.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych went on sick leave today after a bruising session of parliament, leaving a political vacuum in a country destabilised by anti-government protests and threatened with bankruptcy.
A statement on the presidential website today said Yanukovych is on sick leave due to an acute respiratory illness and high fever. There was no indication of how long he might be on leave or whether he would be able to do any work.
The 63-year-old President appears increasingly isolated in a crisis born of a tug-of-war between the West and Ukraine’s former Soviet overlord Russia. A former President said the violence between demonstrators and police had brought the country to the brink of civil war.
Yanukovych is under pressure after two months of major protests seeking his resignation, early elections and other demands.
Shortly after his office announced he had developed a high temperature and acute respiratory ailment, Mr Yanukovych defended his record in handling the crisis and accused the opposition, which is demanding his resignation, of provoking the unrest.
In one of a series of moves aimed at resolving the crisis, the parliament this week voted for the repeal of harsh anti-protest laws. Yanukovych must formally sign that repeal. He also has accepted the resignation of his prime minister, but protesters say the moves are insufficient.
“We have fulfilled all the obligations which the authorities took on themselves,” a presidential statement said, referring to a bill passed on Wednesday granting a conditional amnesty for activists who had been detained.
Yanukovych made a late-night visit to the parliament on Wednesday before it passed a measure offering amnesty to some of those arrested in two months of protests, but only if demonstrators vacate most of the buildings they occupy. The offer was quickly greeted with contempt by the opposition.
“However, the opposition continues to whip up the situation, calling on people to stand in the cold for the sake of the political ambitions of a few leaders.” The amnesty offered freedom from prosecution to peaceful protesters, but only on condition that activists left official buildings – something they have rejected.
But the opposition regards the arrests during the protests — 328 by one lawmaker's count — as fundamentally illegitimate.
Several members of Mr Yanukovych’s own party voted against the bill, even after he visited parliament himself to rally support, and some of his industrialist backers are showing signs of impatience with the two-month-old crisis.
"Is this a compromise, or are these political prisoners," said 30-year-old Artem Sharai, demonstrating on Kiev's central Independence Square. "We will seize new buildings, if the authorities don't really change the situation in the country."
Some opposition figures said they suspected Mr Yanukovych might be giving himself a breathing space after being forced into concessions. “This smacks of a ‘diplomatic illness’,” Rostislav Pavlenko, a member of Vitali Klitschko’s Udar (Punch) party, told Reuters. “It allows Yanukovych not to sign laws, not to meet the opposition, to absent himself from decisions to solve the political crisis.”
Protesters are demanding Yanukovych's resignation, early elections and the firing of authorities responsible for violent police dispersals of demonstrators. The protests started after Yanukovych backed out of a long-awaited agreement to deepen ties with the European Union, but quickly came to encompass a wide array of discontent over corruption, heavy-handed police and dubious courts.
Reuters
The bill would not apply to several city buildings in the center of Kiev which the protesters use as dormitories and operation centers, and are key support facilities for the extensive protest tent camp on the main square. With temperatures dropping as low as -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) during the night, continuing the protests without places to shelter would be virtually impossible.
But the Kiev city hall building, as well as regional administration ones seized by protesters in western Ukrainian cities, will have to be vacated, according to the Unian news agency.