Opposition supporters left City Hall in Kiev on Sunday. Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
KIEV, Ukraine — Ending their occupation of City Hall in Kiev, Ukrainian protesters withdrew from the large granite building on Sunday — but then quickly threatened to take it back if the authorities did not immediately fulfill a pledge to drop all criminal charges against political activists.
The departure from the building in the capital after more than two months eased tensions — temporarily, at least — in the standoff between protesters and President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who set off the country’s tumultuous political crisis in November by spurning a trade deal with the European Union and tilting Ukraine, a former Soviet republic of 46 million people, toward Russia instead.
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In a statement from Brussels, Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, welcomed the evacuation of City Hall as evidence that, after weeks of demands and counterdemands by each side, “several important steps have been undertaken during the last few days to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, thus contributing to a Ukrainian way from the current political crisis.”
Protesters removed a barricade Sunday in Kiev. Sergey Dolzhenko/European Pressphoto Agency
At the same time, however, tens of thousands of people poured into Independence Square in Kiev on Sunday to join a boisterous but peaceful antigovernment rally that featured speeches denouncing Mr. Yanukovych’s “bandit regime” and calling for his swift resignation.
How far both sides were willing to go toward a more enduring truce or even a settlement might become clearer on Tuesday, when Parliament reconvenes and Mr. Yanukovych might present a new candidate for prime minister to fill a post vacant since the last prime minister resigned, in January.
Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, an opposition leader who last month rejected an offer from Mr. Yanukovych to take the post, said at the rally on Sunday that the roughly 2,000 criminal cases against protesters must be closed.
In an interview posted on the website of the Ukrainian weekly Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and opposition leader jailed after Mr. Yanukovych defeated her in the 2010 election, said that she was willing to take part in negotiations to end the crisis but added that “the only topic” up for discussion was the manner of the president’s resignation, including “guarantees for the protection of his family.”
Barricades erected around Independence Square to fend off a possible attack by the riot police remained in place on Sunday, guarded by masked young men carrying homemade shields and wooden clubs. Located inside an area of central Kiev blocked off by barriers, City Hall, although no longer crammed with protesters, remained beyond the reach of the authorities.
But in a sign that neither side wants to return to the violent clashes that killed at least three protesters last month, the police pulled back from barricades on Hrushevsky Street, the soot-smeared scene of the worst violence, and protesters cleared a narrow passageway for vehicles to pass through tangled mounds of garbage, rubber tires, sandbags and ice. A line of masked men in helmets, however, blocked all traffic and pedestrians.
Many of the protesters who left City Hall on Sunday said they disagreed with the decision to vacate the building. The decision had been made by opposition leaders as part of an amnesty deal with the authorities aimed at defusing a crisis that a former Ukrainian president, Leonid M. Kravchuk, said last month had pushed the country to “the brink of civil war.” The government has agreed to drop all criminal charges against protesters, more than 200 of whom were freed from detention on Friday, although they remain under investigation.
Bogdan Burtnuk, an activist from western Ukraine who joined the occupation of City Hall in December, said he thought it was a mistake to leave before “they release and clear all our hostages,” meaning that the freed detainees possibly still faced criminal charges. The agreement to vacate the building was strongly supported by Svoboda, a nationalist political party that is at odds with more hard-line forces like Right Sector, a coalition of militant groups that has said that Mr. Yanukovych’s resignation is a condition for any political settlement.
The evacuation of the building was monitored by the Swiss ambassador in Kiev; Switzerland holds the rotating presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a Vienna-based organization that is working to defuse tensions in Ukraine.
Switzerland’s foreign minister, Didier Burkhalter, said in a statement from Bern that the decision to vacate the building — which was covered in graffiti declaring it the “headquarters of the revolution” — was a “positive development,” and he urged “all sides to remain fully engaged in efforts to reach necessary compromises in a broad and inclusive political dialogue.”
But deep suspicion remained on both sides. Scores of young men in camouflage fatigues who pulled out of City Hall early Sunday later returned to the building, gathering in a militarylike formation outside and vowing to retake it if Ukraine’s prosecutor general did not sign a formal order lifting all charges.
“We do not trust them,” said the group’s commander, who identified himself only as Andriy.
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Ukrainian Protesters End Occupation of Kiev’s City Hall
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