Thousands of Ukrainians Lock Hands in pro-EU Chain

Ukrainian authorities on Friday deployed hundreds of riot police to central Kiev where thousands of protesters gathered after President Viktor Yanukovych failed to salvage a key deal with the European Union.

In a tense atmosphere in the heart of the capital, some 5,000-6,000 demonstrators turned up in the central Independence Square, some chanting "Revolution."

Opposition leaders including world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko were expected to return from a regional summit in Lithuania to address the rally on a sixth day of pro EU-protests.

Many feared the authorities may resort to force and provocations to disperse the demonstration.

One of the rally's organizers, speaking from the roof of a bus, called on the police not to interfere with the protest.

"The authorities are directing all their energy into settling the score with the opposition and strangling a peaceful demonstration," Klitschko's said in comments released by his party UDAR (Punch).

"And to that end they are using not only police and special forces but also provocateurs."

Earlier Friday, thousands of Ukrainians locked hands in a symbolic chain linking their ex-Soviet country to the European Union.

Draped in star-studded blue EU flags and chanting "Ukraine is Europe", protesters formed a human chain that began in the Independence Square and ran along the main Kreshchatyk thoroughfare and other streets.

In the fiercely pro-EU city of Lviv in western Ukraine, some 20,000 locked hands.

"This means that the majority of Ukraine's population wants to be in Europe," Andrii Grytsiuk, a Lviv student, told Agence France Presse.

Some 100 people even crossed the Ukrainian-Polish border to extend the chain to the European Union, organizers said.

"Tens of thousands of people locked hands in all the cities from Kiev to the western border," said one of the organizers, Oleksandr Pakhalchuk.

Historic and linguistic fault lines have traditionally divided Ukraine into the Kremlin-friendly Russian-speaking east and the pro-European Ukrainian-speaking west.

The pro-EU demonstrators, many of them youths, took to the streets after Yanukovyvch refused to sign a landmark political and free trade deal with Brussels that would have symbolized a historic break from Moscow.

The opposition slammed the president's unwillingness to rescue the deal at the two-day summit in Vilnius, accusing Yanukovych of betraying national interests.

"Today Yanukovych disgraced Ukraine in front of the entire world," Klitschko said on the sidelines of the summit in Lithuania.

"The Vilnius summit showed up Yanukovych's complete incompatibility with European leaders when it comes to values, standards and conduct," he told reporters.

Jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who had hoped to walk out of prison as a result of the deal, called on students to keep the protest alive and pressure Yanukovych into signing the agreement.

"At stake is our life together," Tymoshenko said in a statement. "Just try to defend it like adults through all the means possible."

A week before the summit the Ukrainian government suddenly halted all preparations for the deal, prompting thousands to take to the streets in the largest demonstrations since the pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004.

"Thanks to you a true miracle is now happening in Ukraine," Tymoshenko said.

Thousands in eastern and central Ukraine have opposed the EU agreement, but their protests have been outnumbered by the pro-EU rallies in the rest of the country.

Some 3,000 pro-Yanukovych supporters massed in Kiev on Friday.

At the Vilnius summit on Friday, Yanukovych said Ukraine wanted to sign the pact "in the near future" but needed economic and financial aid.