Ukraine Leader's Flight Blocked as Opponents Take Power

By Daryna Krasnolutska, Kateryna Choursina, Ilya Arkhipov, Bloomberg News

23 February 14

krainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko returned to the political stage after leaving prison as Viktor Yanukovych was stopped from fleeing the country following the nation’s bloodiest week since World War II.

Ex-Premier Tymoshenko, who led the overturning of a 2004 Yanukovych election victory in the Orange Revolution, pledged to immediately return to politics, capping a day in which protesters took control of central Kiev and flooded into Yanukovych’s luxury estate. Border guards stopped Yanukovych’s plane from leaving the country in the eastern region of Donetsk after he was stripped of his presidency. He escaped detention.

“Today a dictatorship fell,” Tymoshenko, looking frail as she spoke from a wheelchair after being released from a prison hospital, told protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square. “A new epoch has started -- an epoch of free people, of a free European Ukraine.”

With Yanukovych denouncing events from eastern Ukraine as a “coup d’etat,” opposition parties must quickly establish a new government and shore up an economy in need of outside financial aid. Facing public anger in Kiev and western Ukraine at Yanukovych’s decision last year to pull out of a trade deal with the European Union, they may encounter political wrangling as Tymoshenko’s return complicates plans to share power ahead of an early presidential election scheduled for May 25.

Nation Divided

The dispute between Yanukovych and his detractors polarized sentiment in the Black Sea country of 45 million largely between its western regions bordering ex-communist EU states Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania and those in the south and east that are home to more Russian speakers and ethnic Russians.

Ukraine, a key east-west energy route between Russia and the Europe, spiraled into crisis in November when protesters took to the streets to oppose Yanukovych’s rejection of a deal to deepen ties with the EU. Violence crested last week when at least 82 protesters and police died in fighting before the peace deal and the leader’s flight from Kiev.

Police were absent from the streets in central Kiev, where protesters guarded key government buildings. A day after voting to remove him from office, parliament voted to temporarily give Yanukovych’s presidential powers to speaker Oleksandr Turchynov, who urged parties to agree on a new coalition cabinet by Feb. 25. Yesterday they also voted on measures aimed at bringing those responsible for the violence to justice.

Flight Attempt

Border officials stopped Yanukovych’s plane in Donetsk yesterday, Oleh Slobodyan, the head of the media department of Ukraine’s border service, said by phone today. Yanukovych left the airport and hasn’t been seen trying to cross the border again, Slobodyan said. Former Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko was caught at the same airport, Interfax reported yesterday, citing a customs official.

In the same vote passing Yanukovych’s powers to Turchynov, parliament also agreed to transfer ownership of Yanukovych’s sprawling residence in Kiev’s northern outskirts to the state.

Thousands of people visited it yesterday, with hundreds of cars thronging the entrance and people riding bikes and carrying children around the compound. Previously closed to visitors, it boasted a man-made lake as large as several football fields with a life-sized galleon and a zoo with deer, ostriches, peacocks and other animals. Next to a towering mansion, a garage housed antique cars, motorcycles and at least seven limousines, according to images on website Censor.net.

Boats, Hovercraft

Activists prevented people from entering the mansion. They recovered reams of documents that had been thrown into the pond and dried them in a building full of boats and a small hovercraft, according to images shown on Hromadske TV. The opening of the grounds dominated news broadcasts in Ukraine, where the average nominal wage is 3,619 hryvnia ($404) a month, according to December data from the national Statistics Office.

“We are obliged to bring Yanukovych back” to the capital, Tymoshenko said in her speech, after traveling from a prison hospital where she was receiving long-term treatment for a hernia in her back. She was jailed in 2011 for abuse of office on charges EU leaders have called politically motivated.

Following an announcement to journalists that she would run for president yesterday, she was less definitive about her ambitions today as she met with foreign ambassadors.

“Now is not the time to talk about this,” Tymoshenko was quoted as saying by her spokeswoman Natalia Lysova by phone.

‘No Coup’

In central Kiev, protesters continued to reinforce barricades and direct downtown traffic in the absence of police. Many families posed for pictures around barriers, burnt-out vehicles and a make-shift catapult that protesters designated as a future museum piece. Shops reopened after being closed during the violence.

The peace agreement, signed on Feb. 21 after all-night talks in Kiev with European Union foreign ministers, envisioned a national unity government within 10 days. Lawmakers approved a return to the 2004 constitution, curbing presidential powers.

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

The U.S. White House urged “the prompt formation of a broad, technocratic government of national unity” in Ukraine.

Russian Concern

Ukraine’s next government will probably need international assistance to shore up the country’s battered finances as the EU and Russia tussle for sway over the country.

Standard & Poor’s warned Feb. 21 that Ukraine risks default without “significantly favorable changes” in its political crisis and cut its credit rating to CCC, eight levels below investment grade.

Russia halted a $15 billion bailout for its neighbor after the unrest and talks on resumed financing may continue only after a new government is formed, RIA Novosti reported today, citing Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov in Sydney.

The opposition is following the lead of “armed extremists and thugs whose actions pose a direct threat to the sovereignty and constitutional order in Ukraine,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a statement yesterday.

The staff of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said it was “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.”

IMF Help

The International Monetary Fund said it’s ready to help Ukraine “not only from a humanitarian point of view but also from an economic point of view,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told reporters in Sydney following a meeting of Group-of-20 finance ministers and central bank governors.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said the U.S. was prepared to help Ukraine return to a path of democracy, stability and growth. U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in an interview that nations should be “there with a checkbook” once a “legitimate political authority” was in place.

“We cannot stay deaf and blind to this collapse that is happening in Ukraine,” French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici told reporters in Sydney.