30 January 2014
Ukraine's parliament adopted a law that would grant an amnesty to protesters arrested during the country's crisis, but the opposition refused to vote.
The majority Regions Party backed the law, with 232 deputies voting for and 11 against, after a rare closed-door meeting with President Viktor Yanukovych.
However, the opposition did not vote, as they were unhappy that the law requires that protestors vacate buildings they have occupied in Kiev before it takes effect. A total of 173 MPs present in the parliament did not vote.
Cries of "shame" echoed round the Verkhovna Rada in the raucous vote after speaker Volodymyr Rybak announced that the law had been passed without debate.
The failure of the opposition to back the law means that its adoption is unlikely to end Ukraine's crisis.
It comes as president Leonid Kravchuk described the situation as being on the bring of "civil war".
"All the world acknowledges and Ukraine acknowledges that the state is on the verge of civil war," Kravchuk, Ukraine's president from 1991-1994, told parliament in an emotional address.
"There are parallel authorities in the country and there is a de-facto uprising," said Kravchuk, referring to anti-government protesters who had ousted Kiev authorities and taken control of regional administrations in several parts of the country.
"We need to ease the confrontation between the sides and agree a plan to solve the conflict. We need to work on this plan step by step to ease the confrontation," he added.
