Ukrainian security forces have moved in on pro-EU demonstrators to end a week-long blockade of government headquarters after the authorities sent internal troops into central Kiev in an increasingly tense showdown.
With authorities keen to regain control of the city centre, the party of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko said armed police had raided their offices, although this was denied by police.
Upping the stakes after more than a fortnight of protests over the government's rejection of a pact with the European Union, the protesters a day earlier symbolically toppled the statue of the Soviet Union's founder Vladimir Lenin in Kiev.
President Viktor Yanukovych announced he would meet former Ukrainian presidents on Tuesday in a bid to find a way out of the crisis and was also backing the idea of round-table talks with the opposition.
With international concern growing about the risk of violence, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was to travel to Kiev on Tuesday for talks with Yanukovych.
A column of special troops moved in on the protesters who had blockaded government headquarters in central Kiev for a week, forcing them to leave. Opposition MPs then urged the demonstrators to move down the street to Independence Square, the main protest venue.
"We are now going to defend our Maidan," said opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk, referring to Independence Square by its Ukrainian name.
"It is impossible now to make a step backwards," said protester Volodymyr Kiblyk from the central town of Znamenka, who has been at the Kiev protests for two weeks.
A presidential statement said Yanukovych backed an initiative for talks proposed by Ukraine's first ex-Soviet president Leonid Kravchuk. He will also meet with Kravchuk and two other former leaders, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko, on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters had on Sunday filled central Kiev to denounce Yanukovych's rejection of an EU pact under Kremlin pressure, in the biggest protests since the 2004 Orange Revolution.
The size of Sunday's protest, the third mass rally in successive weekends, increased the pressure on Yanukovych, who further galvanised his opponents by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in almost total secrecy on Friday.
Analysts believe Russia may have offered Ukraine cheaper gas and billions of dollars in aid in exchange for joining the Customs Union.
