Protesters seeking more integration with Europe and the West clashed with the police outside the office of President Viktor F. Yanukovich in Kiev on Sunday.
Kiev, Ukraine — Thousands of people milled about on Independence Square on Monday morning, as the Ukrainian government effectively ceded control of the landmark plaza to protesters demanding the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich and a revival of accords that would draw the country closer to Europe.
Several thousand people also marched on the Cabinet Ministry to demand the resignation of the government. They carried blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags and chanted, “Gang, get out!” Many employees could not enter the building and left — aiding the demonstrators’ effort to paralyze the government.
Meanwhile, Parliamentary leaders continued to meet behind closed doors to discuss the political future of the country and to calculate a response, given fractures that have emerged in Mr. Yanukovich’s support, both in the government and, apparently, among the important constituency of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, known as oligarchs.
Volodymyr Rybak, the speaker of Parliament, said Monday that he did not see any basis for declaring a state of emergency — a step that Mr. Yanukovich and his top security advisers appeared to be considering, and one that would almost certainly escalate the confrontation with demonstrators who have already defied court orders and other edicts.
“The issue today is not considered at any level,” Mr. Rybak said at a briefing, according to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency. “I do not see the necessity.”
Mr. Rybak has called for “round-table” meetings to resolve the crisis, employing the same phrase as that used for negotiations that peacefully resolved Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004.
But on Monday morning he refused demands by opposition lawmakers to hold a vote calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and the rest of the government.
Several of the opposition leaders in Parliament, including Arseniy P. Yatseniuk of the Fatherland coalition, the boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, of the Udar party, and Oleg Tyagnibok of the nationalist Svoboda Party, are leading the protest movement in partnership with a coalition of civic activists.
Inna Bohoslovska, a member of Parliament who has quit Mr. Yanukovich’s Party of Regions in support of the demonstrators, called on Monday for the government to resign. Demonstrators also continued to occupy City Hall in Kiev, where windows had been smashed and walls covered with graffiti. Under a sign for the Kiev City Council, someone had painted in black: “Revolution Headquarters.”
After a huge rally on Sunday — a crowd estimated at a million or more that observers said exceeded even the largest gatherings of the Orange Revolution nine years ago — the demonstrators overnight blocked city streets, using Christmas decorations and police barricades intended to stop the protest.
The result was an oddly festive, fir-trimmed encampment at the heart of the Ukrainian capital. Protest leaders, sensing that momentum had turned to their advantage, continued to add infrastructure to their operation, bringing in television monitors and erecting a small tent city that included first-aid stations and canteens.
Having occupied the nearby Trade Unions building on Sunday, they seized control of a giant screen mounted on its facade, and replaced the advertising it had carried — first with images of the yellow-starred European Union flag, and by Monday morning with a live video feed of speakers on the protest stage outside.
Mr. Yanukovich’s refusal to sign political and free trade accords with the European Union has now directly shaken the president’s prospects of remaining in power. Cracks have begun to emerge in his political base: His chief of administration was reported to have resigned, and a few members of Parliament have quit his party and have decried the police violence.
Many Ukrainians see the agreements with Europe as crucial steps toward a brighter economic and political future, and as a way to break free from the grip of Russia and from Ukraine’s Soviet past. The outcry over Mr. Yanukovich’s abandonment of the accords is pushing Russia into a corner.
