KIEV — Thousands in Kiev on Sunday mourned a protester shot dead during clashes, as a rebellion against President Viktor Yanukovych’s authority spread despite sweeping concessions offered by the embattled leader.
An emotional crowd packed Saint Michael’s Cathedral for the Orthodox funeral to pay their last respects to 25-year-old Mikhail Zhiznevsky, as Pope Francis prayed for dialogue in a country swept by civil strife.
Mourners bearing flowers and waving Ukrainian flags hailed the Belarussian national, who had been living in Ukraine for several years, as a hero of their country and noted that Sunday would have been his 26th birthday.
“He was a very brave, very kind person who gave his life for the future of Ukraine,” one mourner, Iryna Davydova, told AFP.
Officials have confirmed he died of gunshot wounds during recent clashes, but the security forces have denied firing on protesters.
Thousands of activists meanwhile laid siege to local government offices in four Ukrainian cities after protesters occupied regional administrations in nine more official hubs to protest against Yanukovych-appointed governors.
De facto powers in the occupied regional centres have passed to local pro-opposition lawmakers or improvised “People’s Parliaments” set up by the protesters themselves.
In two regions, Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil, local parliaments even approved motions to ban the ruling Party of Regions in a symbolic move that echoes the outlawing of the Communist Party after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Protesters clutching baseball bats and wearing military-style helmets also attended a rally in Kiev after taking over another official building in the capital on Sunday, although the gathering of tens of thousands of people was still far smaller than previous ones.
Two months after the protests began over Yanukovych’s decision to back out of a European Union pact, the president offered on Saturday to share leadership with opposition figures Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister and Vitali Klitschko as deputy prime minister in a dramatic compromise bid.
But opposition leaders have said they are not backing down and will continue negotiations with Yanukovych until other demands are met, in particular that presidential elections due in 2015 be brought forward to this year.
Former boxing champion Klitschko, leader of the UDAR (Punch) Party, branded the proposals “poisoned” in an interview with German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
“This was a poisoned offer by Yanukovych designed to split our opposition movement,” he was quoted as saying. “We will continue to negotiate and to demand early elections. The protest of the Ukrainians against the corrupt president must not have been in vain.”
Opposition leaders have been careful, however, neither accepting nor explicitly rejecting Yanukovych’s proposals.
Pope calls for ‘constructive dialogue’
World leaders have urged dialogue between the two sides — a call joined by Pope Francis who voiced hope in his weekly Angelus prayer on St Peter’s Square that “the search for common good may prevail in the hearts of all”.
“I hope for constructive dialogue between the institutions and civil society,” the Argentine pontiff said, adding: “I am close in my prayers to Ukraine, in particular to those who have lost their lives and their families.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC television he was “very worried” about the protest and emphasised that it should not be seen as “an East-West struggle” with Russia.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius spoke with Klitschko on Sunday, with the minister’s office saying afterwards he had called for “an immediate end to the violence”.
One week after clashes first erupted between the opposition and police, protesters scored another victory by taking control of Ukraine House, a Stalin-era exhibition hall near the protest zone, ousting about 200 special forces using it as a base.
The officers were allowed to exit through a side entrance early Sunday to cries of “Shame!” from protesters, after a siege in which protesters threw Molotov cocktails as police responded with stun grenades.
Protest leaders said the building would now be used as a press centre and an additional place to feed and shelter protesters.
Officials say three people have been killed in protests in Kiev, raising fears of a wider civil conflict in the former Soviet republic’s worst crisis since independence in 1991.
The opposition says six people have died.
Yanukovych’s office said after Saturday’s talks with opposition leaders that the president was willing to shuffle his government and consider constitutional changes to reduce his power, and return to a system according more authority to the prime minister.
The president also agreed to put forward an amnesty bill for arrested protesters and to re-consider draconian anti-protest laws.
But many sceptical protesters simply want Yanukovych to quit.
“We want the authorities to understand that we will stay until victory, and most of us see that as the departure of Yanukovych,” said protester Bogdan, 22.
