About 500 people are standing between the buildings of the Cabinet of Ministers and the National Bank of Ukraine.
Screenshot: webcam
Screenshot: webcam
Special task police are guarding the main entrance to the Cabinet building. Massing nearby are about a thousand young people. They are holding flags of Ukraine, Svoboda, Batkivshchyna and UPA. The others are blocking all entrances and approaches to the building.
The area around the entrance is barricaded with buses to prevent protesters from storming into the building.
The opposition is playing Ukrainian folk songs and modern pop songs through loudspeakers to cheer up the crowd. The central Kreshchatyk street and all the streets adjoining the Independence Square are blocked by self-made barricades that were put up by opposition supporters overnight, using wooden panels, benches and even parts of a giant artificial Christmas tree that was planned to be installed in the square.
The traffic is blocked by several vehicles with the symbols of the rally.
Photo: Golos Stolitsy
At the same time, metal shields have been placed in the passage to Liuteranska Street. A little further, the street has been blocked by police officers and buses.
Eight buses of the Berkut special police are standing in the courtyard of the government house but the police are not taking any action against the protesters.
A banner which reads "What are we beaten for?" has been attached to a metal shield on Bankova Street.
The entire governmental area is blocked from various sides by vehicles and protesters. Government workers are on their way to their offices.
Photo: Golos Stolitsy
The situation is calm so far in the building of the Kyiv city administration and the Trade Union House.
Entry to the city administration is free and people have been gathering there since morning. Inside people are sleeping in many places, primarily in the second floor and the Hall of Columns.
The Hall of Columns also houses a catering post where participants in the action are offered tea and food.
Photo: Golos Stolitsy
There is relative order in the building with cleaning women trying to get down to their duties.
The police in Kyiv have stressed that the seizure of a government building is an offense and suggested that protesters leave the buildings of the Kyiv city administration and the Trade Union House of their own free will.
"During the past few hours law enforcers have been giving explanations that the seizure of a public building is unlawful. This means that all citizens staying in a building violate several provisions of criminal and civil law by their actions and can be held liable. The people staying in these premises at the present moment have been invited to voluntarily leave them and not to aggravate the situation," a statement of the Kyiv police says.
"The police of the capital warn that if the lawful demands are not fulfilled, law enforcement officers will take due measures to free the buildings from offenders," the statement says.
The buildings were captured by "aggressively-minded representatives of Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union and individual protesters," the city police noted.
The opposition favors early parliamentary and presidential elections.
Protesters started gathering in Independent Square on November 21 after the news came that the Ukrainian government decided to suspend the signing of the Association Agreement with the EU. In the early hours of November 30 Berkut special police dispersed the EuroMaidan after which the number of protesters grew manifold.
Another major column of demonstrators is making for Ukraine’s government building to post a peaceful picket there. Ukraine’s former Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko said from an improvised stage on Maidan Nezalezhhnosti, or Independence Square, earlier today that the protesters will lay peaceful siege to the building to urge government resignation.
Lutzenko urged the protesters to concentrate outside the Cabinet building only, while avoiding the presidential administration building where attempts were made on Sunday to break through the police cordons there. "Today we are starting to write the history of a new Ukraine", Lutsenko said. According to him, the opposition will hold a rally outside the government building, until asked to return to Maidan.
Activists have already gathered near the government building. According to news media, 150 protesters have blocked one of the entries to the building.
Verkhovna Rada speaker Volodymyr Rybak has urged politicians to start talks and announced the convocation of a roundtable on Monday. "As the head of Verkhovna Rada I guarantee that such a roundtable will take place literally tomorrow and all sides to the process will have an opportunity to express their thoughts," he said on Inter TV channel Sunday night.
He expressed the conviction that people have the right to attend peaceful rallies and express their opinion.
"Nobody has the right to humiliate these people or beat them and what happened on Friday night is impossible for Ukraine and we will not support the authorities," he said.
Rybak said he met President Viktor Yanukovych who "is on the side of the people" who have a full right to assemble for actions and express their thoughts.
The Ukrainian opposition has urged the protesters to launch a picketing of the government building on Monday. "We shall start the day with a picketing of the Cabinet (building). Our main political demand is for a government resignation. A resolution on no-confidence in the government is currently in the Verkhovna Rada," Arseny Yatsenyuk, head of the Batkivshchina (Fartherland) party's parliamentary faction, said in remarks in the Independence Square. He confirmed that a resignation of President Viktor Yanukovich is the principal goal of the opposition.
There are currently more than 10,000 people in the Independence Square. No militia is in sight. The opposition is finalizing the erection of a large stage at the site where such a stage was during the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004, and are busy pitching up a tent camp.
Photo: Golos Stolitsy
Meanwhile the Crimean parliament members have accused the Ukrainian opposition of violence and encroachments on the constitutional system, says a statement issued by the Presidium of the Crimean Supreme Council and circulated on Sunday.
"The events of the recent days in Kyiv give rise to serious concern for the future of our country. The political and economic stability of the State, its territorial integrity and the very foundations of the constitutional system are in jeopardy," the statement emphasizes.
The Presidium's opinion is that "A handful of politicos seek to seize power in the country under the guise of struggle for the European vector of development.
Especial indignation of the Crimean parliamentarians "is aroused by the fact that the present Maidan (rally) has the same leaders as nine years ago".
"These poltical insolvents ally with neonazis from the Freedom party and they have switched over from peaceful demonstrations to violent actions - a mass unrest an seizure of state-run institutions,"the MPs added.
"The record of events in Kyiv convinces one that those were planned in advance and organized in a streamlined manner. We all are witnessing yet another poliical spectacle, the directors of which are manipulating the consciousness of the masses," the statement says.
The number of injured protesters in Kyiv has grown to 165, with 109 of them hospitalised, the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) reports.
There were earlier reports of 112 injured people.
According to the KCSA, medicalcentres have enough facilities to take care of injured protesters. They are admitted to hospitals irrespective of their places of residence.
Thousands of opponents to the current Ukrainian government are holding meetings in the central parts of Kyiv. Activists have captured the Trade Union House in Independence Square and the KCSA building nearby.
Photo: EPA
A representative delegation will be held in Brussels next week. Among the tasks of the delegation is the discussion on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, said the country's Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara.
According to him, the parties will discuss the issue of gas prices, cooperation with financial international institutions, the decrease of the turnover between Ukraine and the EU, states RIA Novosti.
He did not specify in what format the negotiations will go. Earlier Kyiv offered the trilateral consultations between Ukraine-EU-Russia. Last Friday Kyiv didn’t sign an association agreement with the EU, which was previously expected both in Ukraine and in the EU.
Representatives of special forces "Berkut" dispersed Ukrainian supporters of European integration in the center of Kyiv on early Saturday morning. During protests 35 people were detained, administrative reports were filed on them, now they are all released. According to doctors, 35 people were injured, seven of them are still in the hospital.
On Sunday in the central districts of Kyiv a rally of opponents of the current government of Ukraine was held, which resulted with disturbances. - sumber

- Update - Ukrainian opposition besieges gov’t offices