Updated 7.58pm

UKRAINIAN LAWMAKERS HAVE voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych and hold elections May 25 after he departed the capital for an eastern city and vowed not to resign or leave the country.

As protesters took control of central Kiev, Yanukovych called recent events a “coup d’etat,” according to an interview with UBR television from an undisclosed location.

Russia, an ally, said the Ukrainian opposition failed to fulfil its obligations and that its actions threaten the nation’s sovereignty and order.

The army and the Interior Ministry said they wouldn’t get involved.

Yanukovych’s position is “of a person who can’t understand and acknowledge what’s going on in the country,” Yuriy Yakymenko, an analyst at the Razumkov Center for Economic and Political Studies in the capital of Kiev, said by phone.

‘Comeback unlikely’

His “comeback is very unlikely, even if he might hope for it.”

A motion to remove Yanukovych got 328 votes in the 450-seat parliament. In downtown Kiev, where clashes this week killed at least 77 people, activists were unopposed by police while others roamed into the presidential compound in the capital’s outskirts.

Yanukovych traveled east to Kharkiv after yesterday signing a deal with the opposition to end the bloodiest episode of the country’s post-World War II history.

Protesters were guarding key buildings in the center of Kiev.

‘No Coup’

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who helped negotiate the peace agreement signed by Yanukovych and the opposition, said there was “no coup in Kiev” and that parliament is acting legally.

The president has 24 hours to sign constitutional changes adopted yesterday into law, Sikorski said on Twitter.

Yanukovych said he wouldn’t sign any acts recently passed by the parliament, which he deems illegal.

Security forces

Lawmakers in Kiev earlier today appointed a new speaker to coordinate the government’s activities until a new cabinet is named and also replaced the head of the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for the security forces.

The peace agreement, unveiled yesterday after all-night talks in Kiev with European Union foreign ministers, envisions a national unity government within 10 days.

Lawmakers approved a return to the 2004 constitution, which would curb Yanukovych’s authority, and voted to free jailed ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Today, Tymoshenko left a hospital where she was under guard, her Batkivshchyna party said on its website. She was on her way to the protesters’ camp in Kiev, Interfax reported.

‘Direct Threat’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed his “gravest concern” about the opposition’s “inability to negotiate,” according to a statement on his ministry’s website.

The “opposition not only failed to fulfill any of its obligations but puts forth new requirements, following the lead of armed extremists and thugs whose actions pose a direct threat to the sovereignty and constitutional order in Ukraine,” Lavrov said, according to the statement.

The staff of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, which is responsible for security forces, “stresses it is on the side of the Ukrainian nation,” according to a website statement. The military and the Defense Ministry said they would “remain faithful to the people.”

-  © Bloomberg

Originally published 5.38pm

Read: Orange Revolution leader freed from prison as president leaves Kiev >