Amateur video posted on the Internet Friday showed a crowd toppling a statue of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in Western Ukraine. Protesters celebrated by climbing on top of the statue and severing its head with a chainsaw in a gesture rejecting Moscow's historic influence over Ukraine.
And in Kiev, enormous crowds mourned lives lost in recent days as activists carried coffins with dead bodies through Independence Square and laid them in front of the stage where opposition leaders kneeled to mourn the deaths.
Battles between police and anti-government protesters brought the death toll to more then 70 in two days of the worst violence in the country since Soviet times.
Friday opposition leaders signed an EU-mediated peace deal with Ukraine's President aimed at resolving the ongoing political crisis and opening the way for an early presidential election this year.
