Ukraine’s Parliament yesterday voted to remove President Viktor Yanukovych, who abandoned his Kiev office and denounced what he described as a coup after a week of fighting in the capital’s streets.

In a significant step, Parliament also freed ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who walked free from the hospital where she was jailed.

She later addressed a crowd at Independence Square in Kiev, where she thanked protesters for changing the country.

The apparent toppling of pro-Russia Yanukovych came after he made sweeping concessions in a deal brokered by European Union diplomats on Friday, after days of street battles in which police snipers gunned down protesters.

In a TV interview in the eastern city of Kharkiv, Yanukovych said he would not resign or leave the country and called decisions by Parliament “illegal”. Yet some media reports claimed he was prevented from boarding a plane to Russia.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday told US Secretary of State John Kerry by phone that the peace deal signed in Ukraine was “sharply degraded by Opposition forces’ inability or lack of desire to respect it”.

Yanukovych had enraged much of the population by turning away from the EU to cultivate closer relations with Russia.