KIEV, Ukraine - The crisis in Ukraine took an extraordinary turn on Saturday as crowds of anti-government protesters took control of the government quarter, while lawmakers in parliament appointed their own members to top government spots on Saturday, and news broke that besieged President Viktor Yanukovych had fled the city, possibly even the country.
Opposition factions also took over the presidential estate, allowing people of Kiev their first view of the opulent life that Yanukovych had led.

It was also reported that Yanukovych had verbally agreed to resign. Several opposition members of parliament confirmed that Yanukovych had voiced to them that he had resigned. But his loyal advisor, Hanna Herman, said that he had in fact not done so.

Later in the day Yanukovych appeared in an interview purportedly filmed this afternoon in which he said defiantly that he was not resigning. He also suggested that opposition leaders’ moves in Parliament to appoint members of opposition Batkivshchyna party to leadership positions amounted to a coup d’etat.
"I am doing everything to bring order the country," Yanukovych says in the video. “We have taken all necessary steps to stabilize the political situation in the country, but things have happened the way they have happened.”


“I did everything I could to prevent bloodshed," Yanukovych said. "What we witness now resembles Nazi occupation.... My car was shot, but I am not afraid for my life, I am afraid of my country."
In an unexpected move, parliament also voted overwhelmingly to speed up the process of releasing imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who has served more than two years of a seven-year sentence widely seen by the West as politically motivated.
The developments came less than 24 hours after the president signed a peace deal with three opposition leaders, including Vitali Klitschko, who had announced last year that he would challenge Yanukovych for the presidency in the next elections. In the deal Yanokvych agreed to early elections in December and other measures that would lessen his powers. Those concessions followed the bloodiest week in Ukraine's post-Soviet history, as at least 75 people were killed in three days of violent clashes between police and protesters.
But Saturday the Parliament met to consider even greater changes. Lawmakers agreed to appoint Oleksandr Turchynov, the former deputy prime minister and loyalist of imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, as speaker of parliament and also acting prime minister. Parliament also voted for the immediate release of Tymoshenko, who has been in jail since 2011.
Tymoshenko's daughter said she was free but still in the hospital where she had been treated, according to Reuters.
In addition, protesters seized control of the president's office in Kiev and swarmed over Yankovych's estate, finding there a private zoo, a huge garage with vintage cars and motorcycles and a galleon-style boat in a man-made lake. Many of them posed for souvenir photos.
Picture time for happy Ukrainians at Yanukovich's residence. #euromaidan #whereisyanu pic.twitter.com/vy4ZnNT9mn
— federico escher (@fedescher) February 22, 2014
#Yanukovych's garage likely to blow your mind - pic by @Andriyak pic.twitter.com/7Palu7Tl68
— Myroslava Petsa (@myroslavapetsa) February 22, 2014
Rare books found in Yanukovych's Mezhyhiriya estate. via @MichaelShchur pic.twitter.com/srW0xbgQFi
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 22, 2014
The developments Saturday also suggested a potential split in the nation as lawmakers in the Russia-aligned eastern regions of Ukraine passed a resolution challenging the legitimacy of the national parliament on Saturday and asserting they were taking control of their territories, according to a Reuters report.
Christopher J. Miller is an editor at English-language newspaper the Kyiv Post in Ukraine.