Ukraine's emboldened opposition has pushed for Viktor Yanukovych to resign immediately amid reports that the embattled president had left Kiev after striking a deal to end days of bloody unrest.
An emerging power vacuum gripped the heart of the capital a day after Yanukovych and his political rivals signed a Western-brokered agreement to end the ex-Soviet nation's worst crisis since independence from Moscow in 1991.
Key government buildings remained without police protection on Saturday and baton-armed protesters dressed in military fatigues wandered freely across the president's once-fortified compound.
"We have taken the perimeter of the president's residence under our control for security reasons," said Mykola Velichkovich of the opposition's self-declared Independence Square defence unit.
Friday's deal called for early elections and a unity government while granting amnesty for anti-government protesters detained during three days of unrest that claimed nearly 100 lives.
It also called for the demonstrators to relinquish all public spaces by the end of the weekend, including Kiev's iconic Independence Square, the epicentre of the unrest.
The demonstrators, however, appeared unwilling to abandon the square, which has been occupied since November, when Yanukovych ignited outrage by ditching an historic EU agreement in favour of closer ties with old master Moscow.
The anti-government protests escalated into a Cold War-style confrontation between Moscow and the West over the country's future, with the Kremlin bent on keeping reins on its historic fiefdom and Western countries hoping to bring the economically struggling nation of 46 million into their fold.
Signs of the authorities' slipping grip on power were heightened by a bold push by parliament leaders to force Yanukovych to stand down long before a round of early presidential elections are due to be held in December.
Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko told a boisterous parliament session that Yanukovych had already left Kiev while other MPs claimed to have evidence that the president had actually fled Ukraine.
"We must, as the people demand, adopt a resolution calling on Yanukovych to immediately resign," Klitschko told deputies in Ukraine's Verhovna Rada parliament.
"Today, parliament is the only legitimate body of power," he stressed.
The president's ruling Regions Party that had previously pushed Ukraine closer toward Russia was also standing in disarray Saturday amid mass defections by MPs to opposition ranks.
Parliament speaker Volodymyr Rybak submitted his resignation on Saturday on account of ill health. More than 40 MPs have already quit the Regions Party - once in control of 208 votes in the 450-seat Rada - since the deadly unrest first erupted on Tuesday.
Anti-Russian sentiment has in recent weeks been sweeping the parts of Ukraine that until recently had been strongly loyal to the Kremlin and wary of the cultural values espoused by EU states.
Ukrainian media reports said that protesters had since Friday toppled statues of Lenin - the Soviet founder who for decades has symbolised Moscow's political might - in the pro-Russian cities of Dnipropetrovsk and Potava.
