Ukraine's president faced calls to resign on Wednesday over a $15-billion bailout from Russia which the opposition and protesters said had sold the country out to its former Soviet masters in Moscow.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Kiev on Tuesday after President Viktor Yanukovich secured financial assistance and a gas price discount at talks with President Vladimir Putin, and several hundred spent the night in the freezing cold.
Opposition leaders have called for mass rallies over the holiday season on the central square occupied for weeks by protesters, who have pitched tents behind tall barricades.
"He has given up Ukraine's national interests, given up independence," Vitaly Klitschko, an opposition leader and heavyweight boxing champion, told the crowd on Tuesday.
Ukraine needs money to cover an external funding gap of $17 billion next year - almost the level of the central bank's depleted currency reserves - and avoid defaulting on its debts.
Underlining the depth of the problem, Russian Finance Minister said Moscow would buy $3 billion worth of Ukrainian Eurobonds as early as the end of this week, marking the first instalment in debt purchases to total $15 billion.
However, the United States warned Kiev the deal would not satisfy the protesters and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said ties with Russia should not prevent Kiev from looking West.
"At the moment it seems to be an either-or proposition. ... We need to put an end to this," Merkel told ARD TV. "A bidding competition won't solve the problem."
Russian FM Sergei Lavrov told parliament on Wednesday that the West was continuing to put "overt pressure" on Ukraine.
Putin wants to bring Ukraine's big, mineral-rich market into a Eurasian Union he plans to build with Kazakhstan, Belarus and other ex-Soviet republics to match the economic might of the United States and China. Without Ukraine, it looks much weaker.
"This is a rescue. Without that money, Ukraine would have defaulted some time before the middle of next year," said Chris Weafer, senior partner with consultancy Macro-Advisory.
One analyst, Lilit Gevorgyan of IHS Global Insight, described the assistance as a "bandage but no remedy" for an economy that is heavily dependent on steel and agriculture and has struggled to modernise since the end of the communist era.
Yanukovich has been seeking the best possible deal for his country of 46 million but has been criticised in the West after police used force against the protests in the heart of Kiev.
Moscow, accused by European officials of bullying Kiev into dropping the EU deal last
month with the threat of economic retaliation, now has great financial leverage over Ukraine,
If it withdraws its money and alters the gas price, it could pull the plug on its neighbour. Putin appeared to stress this by saying the agreements on the gas price was temporary.
Source: Reuters
