Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor Yanukovich, has surfaced in Russia and is still claiming to be the legitimate ruler of his country, according to Russian media reports quoting top government sources.
“Given that President Yanukovich appealed to Russian authorities with a request to guarantee his personal safety, that request has been granted on Russian territory,” a government source told Interfax.
An appeal to Ukrainian citizens from Mr Yanukovich said: “My allies and I were being threatened with revenge and so I was forced to ask the Russian authorities to guarantee my personal safety from the actions of extremists.”
Mr Yanukovich said he continues to believe he is the legitimate president of Ukraine and wants to achieve a compromise that would enable Ukraine to exit the crisis. The deposed president called the current session of Ukraine’s parliament – which among other things is electing a new government – “illegitimate”.
“There is an orgy of extremism on the streets of many cities,” wrote the president. “I am certain that in these conditions all the decisions taken [by the parliament] will be ineffective and not carried out.
“In this situation, I officially declare that I am determined to fight to the end for the implementation of important compromise agreements that will bring Ukraine out of the deep political crisis.”
Yesterday evening it was announced that Mr Yanukovich would give a press conference this afternoon in the southern Russian city of Rostov on Don – contradicting earlier claims that he was in the Moscow region staying at a top government sanatorium .
The president has lost authority even among his closest allies following his flight from Kiev – the mayor of a town in his eastern heartland has described him as “history”, his close aides have fled and even the oligarch most tightly allied to him, Rinat Akhmetov, has said he is ready to work with the new authorities.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, accused Mr Yanukovich's government yesterday of stripping state coffers, saying $37 billionn of credit had "disappeared in an unknown direction".
Speaking in parliament Mr Yatsenyuk said that in the past three years “the sum of $70 billion was paid out of Ukraine’s financial system into offshore accounts”.
– ( Guardian service)