Pressure Mounts in Ukraine
Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk places flowers during a commemoration service in Kyiv on Sunday at the funeral of Mykhailo Zhyznevsky, an antigovernment protester killed during recent rallies.
Reuters
KYIV, Ukraine—Antigovernment protests intensified on Sunday, posing the most serious threat to President
Viktor Yanukovych’s
rule since demonstrations began here more than two months ago and raising the stakes in a battle for influence between Russia and the West.
Tens of thousands of protesters across Ukraine besieged government facilities and dug in at local administrations buildings they are occupying in several regional capitals, in a challenge to Mr. Yanukovych’s pivot to the east and Russia’s attempts to assert political and economic power in former Soviet republics.
The widening rebellion throws into question the future of Mr. Yanukovych, who in December sealed a multibillion-dollar bailout from Russia that appeared to secure his political future after abruptly turning his back on a partnership deal with the European Union.
Supporters carry the coffin of Mykhailo Zhyznevsky, an antigovernment protester who was killed during recent rallies, during his funeral in Kyiv on Sunday. The widening rebellion has thrown into question the future of embattled President Viktor Yanukovych.
david mdzinarishvili/Reuters
For Russian President
winning Ukraine’s allegiance was a significant victory in his quest to reassert influence over former Soviet republics. Ukraine was the centerpiece of an EU program aimed at coaxing democratic overhauls in the region in return for free-trade agreements. Now, only tiny Moldova and Georgia are on track to sign deals.
Ukraine, which Mr. Putin often calls a “brotherly nation,” is also a sensitive domestic issue for Russians. A defeat for Mr. Yanukovych could send a powerful signal within Russia, whose tough antiprotest laws and security tactics seem to have served as a model for his response to the demonstrations. The Ukrainian president this month introduced laws mirroring Russian legislation that strictly curbs dissent, and authorities began a brutal crackdown on protesters that left three dead and hundreds injured.
Political Unrest in Ukraine
A close-up look to Kyiv’s Independence Square, key events, political players.
To be sure, Mr. Yanukovych is far from bowed. Police and security services have remained loyal. The loans and cheaper gas secured from Russia in December have patched up Ukraine’s economy. Powerful business tycoons have urged a peaceful resolution to protests and allowed their television channels to broadcast events, but haven’t openly challenged the president.
But the crackdown and the laws triggered uprisings across Ukraine in recent days that appear to have thwarted Mr. Yanukovych’s attempt to take a more authoritarian grip on this country of some 46 million.
The Kremlin, which has endorsed the crackdown and Mr. Yanukovych’s labeling of protesters as radicals, must now be worried, said
Steven Pifer,
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“It is hard to see how they can influence the situation now. It has gotten out of hand and they don’t have any levers to pull,” said Mr. Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
On Saturday, Mr. Yanukovych for the first time offered significant concessions, including appointing two opposition leaders to the government.
But the opposition, urged on by protesters who blame the president for last week’s police crackdown in Kyiv and have called for his ouster, said it would demand additional measures, including snap presidential elections and an amnesty for all protesters.
“No deal,” read a post Sunday on the Twitter account of opposition leader
Arseniy Yatsenyuk,
who was offered the job of prime minister as part of the president’s concessions. “We’re finishing what we started. The people decide our leaders, not you.”
The U.S. State Department didn’t comment Sunday on Mr. Yanukovych’s latest offer, but has been calling for “substantive discussions” between the government and protesters with an aim of “national reconciliation.”
Protests began in November, when Mr. Yanukovych shelved the long-planned integration pact with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia.
Protests evolved into a broader outcry against official corruption, police brutality and the president’s authoritarian turn. Protesters are also angered by the passing of laws this month that strictly curb dissent and mirror Russian legislation. Repealing them is a key demand.
Activists build a barricade in central Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday.
Associated Press
“Mr. Yanukovych doesn’t have the money or the strength” to institute a Russian-style authoritarian regime, said
Andrew Wilson,
senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The uprisings in recent days started in Ukraine’s west, where Mr. Yanukovych is most unpopular. The mayor of Lviv, a major center of dissent, said the new laws wouldn’t apply there.
Protests have even spread to regions east of Kyiv that for years have been loyal to Mr. Yanukovych.
In cities across Ukraine, crowds stormed local government buildings in recent days, shouting, “Get the gang out!” and “Get the criminal out!” a reference to the two prison terms Mr. Yanukovych served in his youth for theft and assault.
Many protesters who occupied local administration and council buildings declared loyalty to the People’s Council, set up by the opposition in Kyiv.
The opposition and analysts credit the new fronts outside the capital as forcing Mr. Yanukovych, who for weeks has largely ignored the protests in the capital, to change tack.
“Yanukovych’s mood was very different. He was not the same as two days ago,”
Oleh Tyahybok,
a nationalist leader who heads one of the three main opposition parties, told the crowd on Kyiv’s central square after talks on Saturday.
The president’s offer, which came in a three-hour meeting with the three main opposition leaders on Saturday, also includes a promise to consider rolling back constitutional changes that handed him more power, a potential amnesty for protesters if they clear the streets and possible release for protesters detained on the front lines in recent days.
The opposition said it wanted actions, not promises, as it didn’t trust him to keep his word.
A key showdown will be the emergency session of parliament on Tuesday, when the president’s allies say an amnesty law and amendments to the authoritarian laws could be considered.
The opposition has raised concerns the president could use the session to institute a state of emergency and a broader crackdown, which the government denies.
Analysts said the offer looked like a trap for the opposition, which is divided and has lost support on the square in recent days amid suspicions some leaders are simply ambitious for power and don’t have the mettle to take on Mr. Yanukovych.
“This is a bluff, since the loss of control over administrations has put the Yanukovych regime in a dangerous position,” said
Taras Berezovets,
a political analyst at Berta Communications. “They’re trying to bring discord into the ranks of the opposition.”
The mood on the square in Kyiv was defiant on Sunday. After the speeches Saturday night, protesters smashed windows and tossed Molotov cocktails in an attack on a convention center nearby where they said riot police were hiding out in preparation for an attack. They eventually called a truce and allowed police, who were outnumbered, to leave. One group of activists occupied the Justice Ministry late Sunday.
The attack reflects a growing militancy among protesters. Hundreds of men armed with clubs and makeshift shields stand at barricades to defend the Kyiv camp, which covers the square and several connected roads.
In the country’s east on Sunday, thousands of protesters in Zaporizhya and Dnipropetrovsk surrounded city administration buildings.
In a sign of increasing unity across Ukraine, hard-core soccer fans known here as “Ultras” pledged to protect protesters from police in many cities.
In Volyn in the country’s west, the city’s governor, a presidential appointee, knelt briefly before hundreds of protesters asking them not to storm the building, according to video shared by protesters online. When one man entered the building to ask police not to assault protesters, an officer wearing a black helmet told him: “We’re with the people. We’re Ukrainians.” They then embraced. The governor later resigned.
In Poltava, the local police chief halted an attempt to storm the governor’s offices by taking off his hat and singing the national anthem, local news agencies reported. Protesters seized the building later.
Some attacks on buildings were less peaceful. In Vinnytsia, protesters stormed the regional administration, spraying fire extinguishers and tossing wooden chairs at riot police.
—Alan Cullison and Katya Gorchinskaya contributed to this article.
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com