Ukrainian MPs vote to oust President Yanukovych

Mr Yanukovych said "bandits" were "terrorising and disgracing" Ukraine

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"