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Ukrainian MPs vote to oust President Yanukovych | Ukrainian MPs vote to oust President Yanukovych |
(35 minutes later) | |
Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May. | Ukrainian MPs have voted to oust President Yanukovych and hold early presidential elections on 25 May. |
Mr Yanukovych's spokeswoman said he did not accept the decision. | |
Earlier on Saturday, protesters walked unchallenged into the president's office and residential compounds. | |
Also on Saturday afternoon, prominent opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was freed from a hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv where she was being held under prison guard. | |
A BBC correspondent saw Tymoshenko driven away in a car after leaving the hospital. | |
MPs had voted to pave the way for her release on Friday. She was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2011 for abuse of power. | |
Her supporters have always maintained this was simply Mr Yanukovych taking out his most prominent opponent, and her release has always been a key demand of the protest movement. | |
MPs 'beaten' | |
The opposition is now in effective control of the capital Kiev, with Mr Yanukovych now in Kharkiv, near the Russian border. | |
The vote to "remove Viktor Yanukovych from the post of president of Ukraine" was passed by 328 MPs. | |
In an address televised before the vote to impeach him, Mr Yanukovych described events in Kiev as a "coup". | |
He insisted he was the "lawfully elected president" and compared the actions of the opposition to the rise to power of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. | |
In his address Mr Yanukovych also called a raft of votes in Ukraine's parliament on Friday "illegitimate", claiming that MPs had been "beaten, pelted with stones and intimidated". | |
However, he did admit that that some had left his party, calling them "traitors". |