Supporters of Ukraine's pro-Western opposition held an angry protest in central Kiev yesterday to condemn President Viktor Yanukovych's pursuit of close ties with Russia.

Protesters accused Mr Yanukovych of selling out to the Kremlin by signing a controversial deal last month that will allow Russia to maintain a naval base in Ukraine until at least 2042 in exchange for cheaper natural gas.

"They are selling everything: our territory, our independence, our identity," Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of Ukraine's main opposition party, told the protesters outside the country's Parliament.

Amid a heavy police presence and beneath drizzling rain, protesters held banners with slogans such as "No to the liquidation of Ukraine!" and waved blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags.

"Yanukovych is in the process of reviving the Soviet Union. He is grovelling before Moscow," Oleg Tiagnybok, head of the nationalist group Svoboda (Freedom), told the crowd.

Several hundred counter-demonstrators from Mr Yanukovych's political party also rallied next to the parliament building, which was surrounded by metal barricades erected by police.

More than 1,000 police, many wearing flak jackets and armed with truncheons, stood guard around Parliament and kept the two camps apart. But most protesters had dispersed by the early afternoon without incident.

The demonstration was called by Ms Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who lost a presidential election to Mr Yanukovych in February.

It came three weeks after Mr Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the deal extending Moscow's lease on its naval base in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol in exchange for a 30 per cent discount on natural gas.