Police and protesters have clashed in the centre of the Ukrainian capital Kiev after 200,000 turned up for an opposition rally in a show of defiance against strict new curbs on protests.
Police used tear gas and smoke bombs in a bid to disperse hundreds of people who sought to storm police cordons near the Verkhovna Rada parliament in the capital.
Many of the demonstrators wore pots and colanders on their heads while others sported ski, medical and carnival masks to mock new legislation which forbids protesters from covering their faces.
But in a sign of the protest movement's growing impatience, key opposition leaders were jeered at during the main rally on Independence Square for their perceived inability to mount a stronger challenge to President Viktor Yanukovych.
The protesters expressed frustration over the lack of a clear program from the opposition leaders after almost two months of protests over the government's ditching of a pact with the EU under Russian pressure.
Some demonstrators rocked police buses outside the Verkhovna Rada and set one of them on fire as police used tear gas against them.
The flames from the blazing police bus lit up the evening sky while the thud of smoke bombs and stun grenades echoed around.
At least two protesters were hurt.
Top opposition leader and former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko urged the crowd not to provoke the police, but many pressed on further towards the parliament and nearby government buildings.
The protesters' mass rally came in response to hugely controversial legislation pushed through by Yanukovych this week in a bid to suppress the pro-EU protest movement.
"We declare the legislation adopted on Thursday illegal," Klitschko told the sea of chanting and flag-waving anti-government protesters as they filled Independence Square and its surrounding streets to bursting point.
"Yanukovych and his stooges want to steal our country," he said.
Yanukovych, 63, on Friday signed into law tough legislation that bans virtually all forms of protests in a move the opposition called a power grab and the West said was anti-democratic.
The new laws allow the authorities to jail those who blockade public buildings for up to five years and permit the arrest of protesters who wear masks or helmets.
Other provisions ban the dissemination of "slander" on the internet and introduce the term "foreign agent" to be applied to non-governmental groups that receive foreign funding.
The protest curbs are expected to breathe fresh life into the demos against Yanukovych, whose decision to ditch a key pact with the EU in November in favour of closer ties with Moscow sparked the largest rallies since Ukraine's 2004 pro-democracy Orange Revolution.
At the height of the protests last month, hundreds of thousands took to the streets calling for the president's resignation and early polls.
US Secretary of State John Kerry called Thursday's snap vote in the Ukrainian parliament anti-democratic and wrong, while EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said such actions "do not contribute to building confidence".
In a sign of mounting tensions, the president on Friday dismissed his chief of staff and will skip this week's prestigious economic forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
Jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has accused her arch-rival Yanukovych of seeking to establish a "neo-dictatorship".
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