Nonetheless, in an effort to de-escalate the violence, the trio managed to strike an amnesty deal between the two parties. The 234 protesters who had been incarcerated between 29 December and February would receive amnesty if, in exchange, the opposition was willing to vacate the government buildings and unblock the streets in the city centre. But not everyone was on board, and reports suggested a possible rift between the Euromaidan camp and the more radical participants on Hrushevskoho Street.
On 14 February, in compliance with the amnesty, the protest leaders agreed to restore traffic on Hrushevskoho Street. On that Sunday morning anti-government demonstrators also vacated Kiev’s city hall, which they had been occupying for almost three months. But this was the only building the protesters were willing to cede and many of them remained suspicious of the government’s willingness to live up to its promises. ‘This does not mean that we are surrendering the buildings, this does not mean that we are pulling down the barricades, this means that we will partially unblock Hrushevskoho Street to restore traffic,’ one Maidan activist said, reiterating that protesters would remain on Hrushevskoho Street. Many protesters were appalled that a deal had been struck up with a person they deemed a ‘murderer’, and the temporary agreement didn’t resolve the opposition’s main demand that President Viktor Yanukovych leave office.
Yanukovych was considered a traitor by the protesters, not someone to be trusted and not someone who would keep his word, so not all the buildings were surrendered and not all barricades were taken down. And although protesters partially unblocked Hrushevskoho Street, the situation turned into another tense stand-off, with police controlling one side of the street and protesters controlling the other.
The EU, however, welcomed the end of the city hall occupation and called on Ukrainian authorities to close ‘all pending court cases, including all house arrests’. To the West, the pro-European message coming from the protesters was promising and hopeful. But former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger offered Brussels the advice that Russia should be included in any talks to resolve the situation and Moscow should be assured that Ukraine would not join NATO. His advice was ignored.
On 17 February an activist was stabbed in the lung after he crossed onto the police-controlled side of the barricades. It was also the day that Russia boosted Yanukovych with a fresh US$2 billion cash injection. The next day, with protesters angered by yet another death and the sellout to Russia, clashes erupted with rekindled force. On 19 February, eighteen people were reported dead after scuffles with police and the military.
A day later Maidan was transformed once again from a protest site into a killing ground. From 20 February at least eighty-eight people, some say more than a hundred, were killed during forty-eight hours of conflict in Kiev. Eighteen police also lost their lives. Hundreds were badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police. It was the bloodiest two days in Ukrainian history since the Second World War. Both police and protesters suffered significant casualties and the conflict was threatening to turn into a civil war.
American and European leaders called on Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to de-escalate the situation and withdraw security forces immediately. They stated that they would not hesitate to sanction any individual officials responsible for the violence. Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin also stressed that Ukraine must take ‘urgent measures to stabilise the situation and suppress extremist and terrorist attacks’. But there were fears that Russia would intervene once the world looked the other way.
For the moment, Russia was busy hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which was held between 7 and 23 February 2014. It was the first Olympics to be held in any of the former Soviet Union states since its break-up in 1991. These were the most expensive Winter Games ever to be staged; for Putin they were intended as a showcase for Russia. But there was concern that once the all-important Olympics were over, Russia would intervene in the crisis because if Yanukovych was driven out, Putin would be left empty-handed. Just three months ago he had won in the game of chess between Europe and Russia; this had been an important victory for him because Ukraine represented the last stronghold in a region where NATO was advancing steadily towards the western borders of Russia.
The violence and bloodshed had prompted a mass defection by the president’s shocked allies in the Ukrainian parliament. What had happened in Kiev had been filmed by professional and amateur journalists, and widely distributed on the internet. There was no denying the atrocities and Yanukovych, his back now against the wall, agreed to participate in negotiations.
On 21 February an agreement was signed by both Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leader Vitali Klitschko. The most important points were that the constitution would be restored and that new elections would be held as soon as this happened, but no later than December 2014. Restoring the constitution meant that Ukraine would revert to being a parliamentary republic, in which the prime minister and the parliament had more power than the president. All parties were to refrain from any violence.
However, although this agreement had been signed by the two main parties in the conflict, the protesters remained unwavering in their demand that Yanukovych had to go immediately; no other deal would persuade them to go home. They declared an ultimatum, giving Yanukovych until the next morning to officially resign from office.
So it was that just forty-eight hours after Ukraine suffered the deadliest day in its three-month uprising, President Viktor Yanukovych suddenly disappeared. A day earlier he had inked a deal with his parliamentary opposition’s leaders to hold early elections and limit his powers. Now, in the space of a day, everything had changed once again.
Once it was discovered that Yanukovych had ‘fled’, parliament was called into session. By an overwhelming majority of votes, the interim parliament, now running the country, chose to remove the president from power. New elections were quickly set; they would be held on 25 May 2014. In Brussels, the European Commission acknowledged Oleksandr Turchynov, a Ukrainian politician, screenwriter and economist as the ‘interim president’ until elections could be held. The elite Berkut police unit, blamed for the deaths of protesters, was disbanded and Yulia Tymoshenko was immediately freed from prison. She arrived in Kiev soon after to talk to the people still crowding the capital’s streets. Security forces stopped guarding administrative buildings, at last siding with the protesters.
A criminal case was filed against Ukraine’s former leaders for the mass murder of civilians. Overnight Yanukovych and several other members of parliament became fugitives, wanted men. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev questioned the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities, stating that the acting authorities had come to power by way of an ‘armed mutiny’ so their legitimacy was causing ‘big doubts’.
No one knew where the actual president had gone. He seemed to have vanished into thin air. Rumours spread that Yanukovych had fled to an unknown location in the country’s east or south, near the Russian border, where his support was still strong. In the days prior to his disappearance his government had crumbled all around him; now there were reports in the media that Yanukovych had departed Ukraine altogether and had possibly taken refuge in Russia. To most observers it was obvious that his reign had ended, but it soon became apparent that the former president held quite a different view of his status.
The goings on in Kiev were monitored warily by the inhabitants of the Ukrainian peninsula in Crimea. Tensions were mounting there as the fall of the old government became inevitable and a new interim government was installed.