By Pavel Polityuk and Matt Robinson KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine's parliament voted on Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovich, who abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup after a week of fighting in the streets of the capital. Parliament also freed his arch-nemesis, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who walked free from the hospital where she had been jailed, completing a radical transformation in the former Soviet republic of 46 million people. The apparent toppling of the pro-Russian leader after bloodshed in Kiev that saw 77 people killed and the center of the capital transformed into a blazing inferno, looks likely to pull Ukraine away from Moscow's orbit and closer to Europe. It is also a stark reversal for Russian President Vladimir Putin's dream of recreating as much as possible of the Soviet Union in a new Eurasian Union, in which Moscow had counted on Yanukovich to deliver Ukraine as a central member.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/yanukovich-abandons-kiev-compound-opposition-demands-vote-may-095607317.html

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