KIEV, Ukraine — President Viktor Yanukovych conceded some ground to anti-government protesters on Tuesday, accepting the resignation of the country’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Azarov’s cabinet.
Azarov said he had decided to step down “for the sake of a peaceful settlement” to the current political turmoil in Ukraine.
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In a statement posted to the government website Tuesday morning as lawmakers filed into Ukraine’s parliament, Azarov wrote that he had asked President Yanukovych to accept his resignation “in order to create additional possibilities for socio-political compromise [and] to deal with the conflict peacefully.”
“Today, the most important thing is to preserve the unity and integrity of Ukraine,” Azarov said. “That is far more important than anyone’s personal plans or ambitions. And that is exactly why I have taken this decision.”
Vitali Klitschko, the former heavyweight boxing champion who is now leader of the opposition UDAR party, called Azarov’s resignation “a face-saving measure,” adding that it would not be enough to quell anti-government protests now in their third month.
"It’s not a victory. It’s only a step to the victory,” Klitschko said.
His comments echoed those of opposition Batkivshchyna party lawmaker Andriy Pavlovsky. “It’s a small step to resolve the confrontation,” he said.
Later in the afternoon, Yanukovych appointed Azarov’s first deputy, Sergey Arbuzov, as acting prime minister, according to a statement from the government website. Arbuzov previously headed Ukraine’s central bank and has been closely tied to Yanukovych’s so-called “family.”
Days earlier, President Yanukovych had offered the position to head the government to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk of the Batkivschyna party, saying that if he accepted, Azarov would be out. During a closed-door meeting between opposition leaders and the president to discuss solutions to the political crisis on Monday, Yatseniuk said he had turned down the president’s offer.
Taras Berezovets, director of Kiev-based political consultancy Berta Communications, predicated that businessman Petro Poroshenko, also an opposition member of parliament, would be made the next prime minister as a compromise choice between Yanukoych and the political opposition.
The comments of Hanna Herman, a lawmaker from the pro-presidential Party of Regions, seemed to bolster this idea. She said the new prime minister would be a person “with a broad view of the world.”
“We offered for the opposition to lead the government; we wanted it to be a coalition government, but the opposition was neither prepared nor willing to do it,” she added, referring to Batkivshchyna leader Yatseniuk’s refusal on Monday to step into the position.
Separately, lawmakers met in an extraordinary parliament session, where they voted overwhelmingly to repeal a package of anti-protest laws pushed through parliament and quickly signed by President Yanukovych on Jan. 16, which severely restricted the rights to freedom of assembly and speech in the country.
"We revoked the laws against which all the country has revolted," Yatseniuk said, adding that the president should immediately sign the repeal of the legislation into law.
The passage of the laws triggered tense and sometimes violent standoffs between police and radical protesters in recent days, resulting in hundreds of injuries on both sides of the lines and the deaths of at least three protesters. Police have fired rubber bullets and live ammunition indiscriminately at protesters who have lobbed Molotov cocktails and stones into their ranks.
The violent clashes led to fears that Yanukovych would declare a state of emergency, which would grant him the extrajudicial powers to impose a curfew and mobilize the military to force protesters from their camp on Kiev's Independence Square. On Sunday, Justice Minister Olena Lukash threatened to ask the government to declare a state of emergency after a militant group of protesters called Spilna Sprava (Common Cause) seized her building. They later vacated the building but continued to block access to it.
The cancelation of the laws is just one on a list of demands from opposition leaders and anti-government protesters. They have also demanded that President Yanukovych resign, that snap elections be held ahead of scheduled elections in 2015, that amnesty be granted to all protesters who have participated in demonstrations and that those who have been detained during the demonstrations be released.
The protests in Ukraine first began in late November, when President Yanukovych spurned a long-anticipated trade deal with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia, which in December agreed to by $15 billion of Ukrainian bonds to keep the cash-strapped country from falling into a financial abyss.
The largely peaceful protests intensified in early December after police violently dispersed a group of protesters comprised of mainly university students and then again in January when Yanukovych signed into law sweeping new anti-protest legislation.
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Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.