KIEV, Ukraine — A top opposition leader in Ukraine’s two-month-long political crisis said Saturday that protests will continue despite the embattled president’s offer to appoint him as prime minister.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a large crowd at Kiev’s central square that although the opposition is generally ready to accept leadership of the government, President Viktor Yanukovych must meet several key demands of the opposition and that talks will continue.
Yatsenyuk said a special session of parliament called for Tuesday could be decisive. Yanukovych has said that session could discuss a government reshuffle and changes to harsh anti-protest laws that set off clashes between police and protesters over the past week.
The protests began in November in Kiev when Yanukovych shelved a trade pact with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia, and boiled over into violence a week ago over the anti-protest laws.
“Tuesday is judgment day,” Yatsenyuk told a crowd of protesters at Independence Square. “We do not believe a single word of theirs. We believe only actions and results.”
At a later news conference, Yatsenyuk said, “We are not throwing out the proposal, but we are not accepting it, either. We are conducting serious consultations among three opposition forces.”
He also said the opposition would demand to sign a free-trade agreement with the European Union and free political prisoners, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The opposition also is demanding early presidential elections. Another protest leader, Vitali Klitschko, told the crowd that they would press ahead with that demand.
About an hour after the opposition leaders spoke, demonstrators attacked a building near the square where police were stationed, smashing windows, breaking doors and hurling firebombs.
Yanukovych’s offer, coming as protester anger rises and spreads from the capital to a wide swath of the country, appeared to have been both a concession and an adroit strategy to put the opposition in a bind.
Accepting the offer could have tarred Yatsenyuk among protesters as a sell-out, but rejecting it would make him appear obdurate and unwilling to seek a way out of the crisis short of getting everything the opposition wants.
The offer came hours after the head of the country’s police, widely despised by the opposition, claimed protesters had seized and tortured two police officers before releasing them. The opposition denied it, and said Interior Minister Vitali Zakharchenko was making a bogus claim to justify a police sweep against protesters.
Three protesters have died in the clashes, two of them from gunshot wounds and a third of unspecified injuries. The Interior Ministry said a police officer was found shot in the head overnight. No arrests have been made or suspects named.
