A horde of opposition supporters has gathered in central Kiev to hail the former Ukrainian premier Yulia Tymoshenko after she was being freed from custody.
She has addressed them from her wheelchair due to a back injury.
“You are heroes,” she told the crowd on Independence Square, the focus of protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, and broke down in tears, reports BBC Online.
The speech came at the end of a dramatic day, with the president fleeing Kiev but refusing to quit.
Tymoshenko warned that the protesters should not think their job was done.
“Until you finish this job and until we travel all the way, nobody has the right to leave,” she said. “Because nobody could do it - not other countries, nobody - could do what you have done. We’ve eliminated this cancer, this tumour.”
But while she received large cheers from many in the audience, she does not enjoy universal support among the opposition, says the BBC’s David Stern in Kiev.
Before she went into prison in 2011, her popularity ratings were dropping and many Ukrainians blame her in part for the chaos of the post-Orange Revolution years, or see her as a member of Ukraine’s corrupt elite.
Dozens of people walked away in disgust when she appeared on the stage, shouting that she did not represent them, the BBC’s Tim Wilcox in Independence Square reports.
Tymoshenko was freed following a vote by parliament on Friday paving the way for her release.
She was sentenced to seven years in jail after a controversial verdict on her actions as prime minister.
Earlier on Saturday, she left the hospital in the eastern city of Kharkiv, where she had been held under prison guard, and flew to Kiev.
She told journalists at Kiev airport that those behind violence “must be punished”, the Interfax agency reports. The health ministry says 88 people are now known to have been killed since 18 February in the latest series of clashes in Kiev.
Opposition seize control
Ukraine’s parliament voted on Saturday to remove President Viktor Yanukovych and hold a presidential election on 25 May, completing a radical transformation in the former Soviet republic.
The parliamentary vote came after police stopped guarding presidential buildings, allowing protesters in, and parliament made new high-level appointments.
Yanukovych said events in Kiev were a "coup" and vowed not to stand down.
He compared the actions of the opposition to the rise to power of the Nazis in 1930s Germany and claimed MPs from his party had been "beaten, pelted with stones and intimidated".
The opposition is now in effective control of the capital Kiev, with Yanukovych's last known whereabouts in Kharkiv, near the Russian border, after travelling there late on Friday night.
Police stopped guarding presidential buildings, allowing protesters in, including at the presidential country residence, just outside the capital.
An editor at the English-language Kyiv Post tweeted a photo of the paper's journalists scrutinising documents recovered at the estate, adding that they would stay there all night.
Media reports have quoted Ukrainian officials as saying Yanukovych was stopped by border police while attempting to fly to Russia aboard a private plane.
