REPORT: Yanukovich tried to flee Ukraine parliamentary speaker -...

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Ukraine's parliamentary speaker was quoted on Saturday as saying President Viktor Yanukovich had tried to board a plane to Russia but had been prevented from doing so and was now in the Donetsk region.

"He tried to get on a plane to Russia but border officials stopped him," Interfax news agency quoted Oleksander Turchynov, an opponent of Yanukovich, as saying. The report could not immediately be confirmed.

This as, Ukraine's parliament voted to remove Yanukovich from office, hours after he abandoned his Kiev office to protesters and denounced what he described as a coup. Parliament declared the president constitutionally unable to carry out his duties and set an early election for May 25.

In a television interview shortly beforehand, which the station said was conducted in the eastern city of Kharkiv, Yanukovich said he would not resign or leave the country, and called decisions by parliament "illegal".

President Viktor Yanukovich compared the situation in Ukraine to Germany in the 1930s, when Nazi leader Adolf Hitler came to power, calling his opponents gangsters who were terrorising the country and said he would now travel through southeast Ukraine meeting people.

The newly-installed interior minister declared that the police now stood with demonstrators they had fought for days, when central Kiev became a war zone with 77 people killed.

Earlier in the day, Parliament in Ukraine elected opposition lawmaker Arsen Avakov as interior minister until the formation of a new coalition government.

Avakov takes over the powerful post after lawmakers on Friday dismissed Vitaly Zakharchenko, an ally of embattled President Viktor Yanukovich, following two days of carnage in the capital, Kiev.

Ukrainian lawmakers also elected a close ally of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko to the powerful post of parliament speaker, replacing a loyalist of embattled President Viktor Yanukovich.

Oleksander Turchynov is a senior member of Tymoshenko's Fatherland party. He was elected by 288 votes in the 450-seat parliament.

This comes after hundreds of people entered the grounds of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich's sprawling residence outside Kiev but had not gone inside the building itself, a Reuters photographer said.

The residence is in Mezhyhirya, some 15 km (10 miles) from the capital, Kiev. Yanukovich's whereabouts were not known. The photographer said "self-defence" units of anti-government protesters were controlling entry to the compound.

Protesters in the Ukrainian capital claimed full control of the city Saturday following the signing of a Western-brokered peace deal aimed at ending the nation's three-month political crisis. The nation's embattled president reportedly fled the capital for his support base in Ukraine's Russia-leaning east.

Ukrainian opposition leader Tymoshenko freed:

Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was freed on Saturday from the hospital where she had been held under prison guard for most of the time since she was convicted in 2011.

The former prime minister, a bitter rival of President Viktor Yanukovich, waved to supporters from a car as she was driven out of the hospital in the northeastern city if Kharkiv, a Reuters photographer said.

Tymoshenko, 53, was jailed in 2011 for abuse of office over a gas deal with Russia but her supporters and Western leaders say her trial was politically motivated.

Tymoshenko said parliament's vote on Saturday to oust President Viktor Yanukovich amounted to the fall of a dictator.

"Our homeland will from today on be able to see the sun and sky as a dictatorship has ended," she told reporters after her release from the hospital where she had been held under prison guard for most of the time since she was jailed in 2011.

Regretting the deaths of anti-Yanukovich protesters in gun battles and clashes with police, she said everything must be done so that "each drop of blood was not spilled in vain."

Local reactions:

The armed forces of Ukraine will not become involved in any political conflict, the military general staff said in a statement posted on the website of the defence ministry on Saturday.

"The armed forces of Ukraine are loyal to their constitutional obligations and cannot be pulled into domestic political conflict," it said.

This as, the heads of four Ukrainian security bodies, including the police's Berkut anti-riot units, appeared in parliament on Saturday and declared they would not take part in any conflict with the people.

In turn, opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko said on Twitter that the Ukrainian parliament must dismiss President Viktor Yanukovich and set early elections for no later than May 25.

Klitschko said President Viktor Yanukovich had left Kiev and that the country must hold early elections.

International reactions:

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Saturday there was no coup in Kiev and Ukraine's government buildings were abandoned by the administration.

He said on Twitter the speaker of parliament had been elected legally and added that President Viktor Yanukovich had 24 hours to sign the 2004 Ukrainian constitution into law.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Twitter that Sikorski held a telephone conversation on Saturday with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

For his part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the opposition in Ukraine had failed to deliver on the Feb. 21 agreement with President Viktor Yanukovich.

The Foreign Ministry said that was the message Lavrov conveyed to his German, Polish and French counterparts - the European Union trio that helped reach the deal between the rival sides in Kiev - on the phone on Saturday.

"The opposition not only has failed to fulfil a single of its obligations but is already presenting new demands all the time, following the lead of armed extremists and pogromists whose actions pose direct threat to Ukraine's sovereignty and constitutional order," Lavrov told the EU ministers, according to a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website.