# Yanukovych flees Kyiv after Euromaidan climax Date: 2014 ## The fact On 22 February 2014 the [Verkhovna Rada](/organizations/verkhovna-rada) of Ukraine adopted Resolution No. 757-VII, “On the self-removal of the President of Ukraine from performing constitutional powers and the calling of early presidential elections.” The resolution recorded that President [Viktor Yanukovych](/people/viktor-yanukovych) had, in a non-constitutional manner, withdrawn from performing his constitutional powers and was not performing his duties, and it set early presidential elections for 25 May 2014. The same day, after leaving Kyiv, Yanukovych gave a televised interview denouncing what he called a coup d’état, refusing to resign, and saying he would remain on the territory of Ukraine. The official instrument is the Rada resolution published in the legislation database: https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/757-18. An English abstract of the same resolution is on the Rada site. Independent contemporaneous reporting of the 328–vote and of Yanukovych’s interview is the Reuters dispatch of 22 February 2014: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ukraine-parliament-votes-to-oust-yanukovich-sets-may-election-idUSBREA1L0M9/. A neighbouring official letter from Ukraine to the UN Security Council (S/2014/122) later described the 21 February agreement, Yanukovych’s 22 February statement that he would not sign the restored 2004 Constitution law, and his departure from Kyiv. ## Context Euromaidan began in November 2013 after Yanukovych’s government suspended signature of an Association Agreement with the European Union. By mid-February 2014 the protest in Kyiv had become an armed confrontation with interior troops. On 21 February 2014 Yanukovych and opposition leaders [Arseniy Yatsenyuk](/people/arseniy-yatsenyuk), [Vitali Klitschko](/people/vitali-klitschko) and Oleh Tyahnybok signed an “Agreement on the Settlement of the Crisis in Ukraine,” witnessed for the EU by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland ([Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier), [Laurent Fabius](/people/laurent-fabius), [Radosław Sikorski](/people/rados-aw-sikorski)). Vladimir Lukin, the Russian Federation’s special envoy, did not sign. The German foreign ministry released the English text the same day; a contemporaneous print of that text is at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/21/agreement-on-the-settlement-of-crisis-in-ukraine-full-text. The agreement provided for restoration of the 2004 Constitution within 48 hours, a national-unity government, constitutional reform by September 2014, and presidential elections no later than December 2014. Yanukovych left Kyiv on the evening of 21 February, after the signature and after Maidan crowds rejected a delay until December. New York Times later corrected the clock: the departure from the capital was Friday evening, 21 February, not Saturday. 22 February is the date on which parliament recorded self-removal and on which Yanukovych, then outside Kyiv, gave the interview calling the change of control a coup. Reuters the same day reported that the 450-seat Rada backed the motion by 328 votes after mass defections from the Party of Regions, and that Yanukovych said he would “sign nothing with gangsters.” A separate Reuters item the same day quoted the new speaker, [Oleksandr Turchynov](/people/oleksandr-turchynov), as saying border officials had stopped Yanukovych from boarding a plane; that claim is attributed, not independently verified here. [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) was Chancellor of Germany. She did not sign the 21 February text; Steinmeier signed as witness. Merkel’s government was one of the three EU principals mediating that night. [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin) was President of the Russian Federation. Lukin’s non-signature is the dated Russian act on the 21 February paper; it is not a Kremlin order to Yanukovych to flee, and this Fact does not treat it as one. Putin’s later characterisation of 22 February as an unconstitutional coup is a neighbouring political claim, stored as attribution, not as the occurrence. The European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council had already adopted conclusions on Ukraine in February 2014, including the 20 February sitting during the deadliest Maidan days. Those conclusions are a neighbouring EU instrument. They are not this Rada vote. OSCE/ODIHR’s later election-observation report on the 25 May 2014 early presidential election records the 22 February Rada vote that called the election after Yanukovych “was voted out of office by the parliament having ceased performing his duties” (https://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/ukraine/120549). ## Evidence and sources Primary official record: Resolution 757-VII of 22 February 2014, Chairman Oleksandr Turchynov, in force from adoption, calling early presidential elections for 25 May 2014 (https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/757-18; Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine). The Rada’s English news item of 17:16 on 22 February restates the three operative paragraphs. Ukraine’s letter circulating as UN document S/2014/122 (https://docs.un.org/en/S/2014/122) describes the 21 February agreement, Lukin’s non-signature, the Rada’s 21 February constitutional-restoration law, Yanukovych’s 22 February video-interview refusing to sign that law, and his leaving Kyiv. Independent contemporaneous record: Reuters, 22 February 2014, “Ukraine parliament votes to oust Yanukovich, sets May election” (https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ukraine-parliament-votes-to-oust-yanukovich-sets-may-election-idUSBREA1L0M9/), including the 328-vote figure and Yanukovych’s interview language of “coup d’état.” A second Reuters item the same day records Yanukovych saying he would stay in Ukraine and would not sign with “gangsters” (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-yanukovich-idUSBREA1L0I220140222/). Accounts conflict on legal characterisation, not on whether the Rada voted and whether Yanukovych had left the capital. Yanukovych called it a coup and said he remained president. The Rada called it self-removal under extreme necessity. The 21 February agreement’s EU witnesses had expected him to stay in office until an early election. Those are attributed legal and political characterisations. ## Significance In product terms this is a recorded action: a sitting president left the capital after the Euromaidan climax, and parliament recorded that he was no longer performing his duties. The attached driver is ukraine-war. The path is political rupture that opened the 2014 phase of that war — Crimea in March, Donbas from April — not a finding that 22 February itself moved a unique battle-death series. A later annexation treaty, a later Minsk freeze, or the 24 February 2022 invasion address are neighbouring Facts with their own dates. They are not this vote. Viktor Yanukovych is the office-[holder](/people/eric-holder) who left Kyiv and who, on 22 February, refused to treat the Rada’s acts as binding. Angela Merkel is the German chancellor whose foreign minister witnessed the 21 February paper that did not hold through the next day. The welfare sign of the later war is scored on impacts, not as an editorial in this description. Contribution polarity, where stored, lives on contribution direction and on the driver’s impact direction. This page does not invent a numeric contribution size and does not invent a Maidan death total. ## What is established and what is not Established: on 22 February 2014 the Verkhovna Rada adopted Resolution 757-VII recording Yanukovych’s self-removal and setting presidential elections for 25 May 2014, by a recorded 328 votes; Yanukovych had already left Kyiv after the 21 February EU-mediated agreement; he publicly refused to resign and called the change of control a coup; the 21 February agreement was witnessed by the German, French and Polish foreign ministers; the Russian envoy did not sign; OSCE/ODIHR later treated the 22 February vote as the act that called the early election. Not established: a unique official body-count from 18–21 February as a Factrail coefficient; that the Rada followed the ordinary impeachment procedure in full; that Merkel or Putin authored the 22 February resolution; that 22 February completed the annexation of Crimea or the opening of the Donbas war. Those later instruments have other dates. What would change the picture: a contradictory original of Resolution 757-VII; a signed presidential resignation of 22 February, which the record does not contain; a later court judgment vacating the resolution as the sole legal source; or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this parliamentary day rather than of the later military operations. If a death or displacement figure is not in the official or independent records named above, it is not supplied here. ## Drivers - Ukraine war (Crimea–Donbas–2022+): https://factrail.ai/drivers/ukraine-war ## Sources - https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ukraine-parliament-votes-to-oust-yanukovich-sets-may-election-idUSBREA1L0M9/ - https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/757-18 ## Methodology https://factrail.ai/methodology Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/ua-euromaidan-yanukovych-flight-2014-02