KIEV-
Ukrainian authorities on Monday announced that the ousted President Viktor Yanukovich is wanted for mass murder of demonstrators that shot by police snipers during months of bloody street protests.
Yanukovich, who vanished on Saturday, is still at large.
“An official case for the mass murder of peaceful citizens has been opened,” acting interior minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook profile. “Yanukovich and other people responsible for this have been declared wanted,” he said.
Yanukovich had left a private residence in Balaclava, in the Russian-speaking Crimea region, for an unknown destination in a car with one of his aides, Avakov said.
As rival neighbours east and west of the former Soviet republic said a power vacuum in Kiev must not lead to the country breaking apart, acting President Oleksander Turchinov said Ukraine’s new leaders wanted relations with Russia on a “new, equal and good-neighbourly footing that recognizes and takes into account Ukraine’s European choice”.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will travel to Ukraine on Monday, where she is expected to discuss measures to shore up the ailing economy, which the finance ministry said required $35 billion in foreign aid over the next two years, with the first tranche needed within two weeks.
A day after Yanukovich fled, parliament named its new speaker, Turchinov, as interim head of state. An ally of the ousted leader’s rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, he aims to swear in a government by Tuesday that can run things until a presidential election on May 25.
