Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych today refused to step down and denounced a "coup" by protesters as the emboldened opposition took control of parliament and parts of Kiev in another dramatic turn in the three-month crisis.
Yanukovych's regime appeared close to collapse as protesters took control of his offices and lawmakers voted to immediately free jailed pro-Western opposition icon Yulia Tymoshenko.
But Yanukovych defiantly told a local television station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv -- a pro-Russian bedrock of support -- that he would fight tooth and nail against the "bandits" trying to oust him.
"I am not leaving the country for anywhere. I do not intend to resign. I am the legitimately elected president," the 63-year-old leader said in a firm voice.
Yanukovych said with a hint of outrage that "everything happening today can primarily be described as vandalism, banditry and a coup d'etat."
"This is not an opposition," Yanukovych scoffed. "These are bandits."
Yet a sense of an emerging power vacuum gripped the charred heart of the capital a day after Yanukovych and his political rivals signed a Western-brokered peace deal to end the ex-Soviet nation's worst crisis since independence from Moscow in 1991.
Key government buildings were left without police protection and baton-armed protesters dressed in military fatigues wandered freely across the president's once-fortified compound.
"We have taken the perimeter of the president's residence under our control for security reasons," Mykola Velichkovich of the opposition's self-declared Independence Square defence unit told AFP.
Thousands of mourners meanwhile brought carnations and roses to dozens of spots across Kiev's iconic Independence Square on which protesters were shot dead by police in a week of carnage that claimed nearly 100 lives.
