Ukraine minister disbands Berkut riot police blamed for violence

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- A riot police force used against anti-government protesters in Ukraine has been disbanded, the country's acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Wednesday.

Demonstrators accused the elite Berkut force, deployed by the government of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych to quell recent protests, of using excessive force.

Avakov said on his Facebook page that he'd signed the order disbanding the force Tuesday.

But the new, pro-Russian mayor of Sevastopol, in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, claimed Tuesday night that he had secured funding to keep paying elite Berkut riot police in his city even after they were disbanded.

The mayor, Alexej Chaliy, made the comments at a rally in Sevastopol. The interim authorities in Kiev have said he is not a legitimate leader.

The back-and-forth comes as Ukraine's lawmakers scramble to put together a new unity government amid continued instability following Yanukovych's ouster.

Vasil Gatsko, of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms (UDAR) party, said the three main opposition parties and smaller parties will meet Wednesday to discuss proposed members of the new government.

Once the parties agree, they will take the list of proposed new government members to Kiev's Independence Square, or Maidan -- which has been at the heart of the protest movement -- for approval from the crowds gathered there.

Then the newly formed government will be officially voted in in Parliament Thursday morning, Gatsko said. The interim authorities had initially hoped to announce a new government on Tuesday.

The lawmakers face the challenge of forming a body that is genuinely representative of all the main political parties, despite their widely divergent views, and includes technical experts and some of the people's heroes from the protests in Independence Square.

Presidential and local elections are due to be held on May 25.

One candidate has already been announced. Opposition leader and former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, of the UDAR party, will run for the presidency, his press secretary Oksana Zinovyeva said.

Crimea fears

Tensions are high between pro-Russian and pro-European Ukrainians, and clashes have broken out in the Crimea region, on the Black Sea.

In Sevastopol, where some 60% of the population is Russian and Moscow has a key Black Sea naval base, many are angered that Yanukovych has been forced out and fear that they will be oppressed by the country's new leaders.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has accused Ukraine's lawmakers of discriminating against ethnic Russians by excluding them from the reform process.

Yanukovych's base of support is in eastern Ukraine, where Russian culture and language predominate. In that region, most people are suspicious of the Europe-leaning views of their counterparts in western Ukraine, who were at the heart of the anti-government protests that filled central Kiev since November.

Many are struggling to get to grips with the sequence of political upheaval that has unfolded in Ukraine in recent days, after the months of protests.

Last week, the bloody street clashes between demonstrators and security forces left more than 80 dead, the deadliest violence in the country since it gained independence when the Soviet Union collapsed 22 years ago.

Russia, which backed Yanukovych, contends that the President was driven out by an "armed mutiny" of extremists and terrorists. A warrant has been issued for his arrest but his whereabouts remain unknown.

Diplomatic moves

While Yanukovych is on the run, the diplomatic wheels have been set in motion within the international community.

Speaking in Washington on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said officials were "deeply engaged in trying to help this extraordinary transition that is taking place in Ukraine."

In a joint news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Kerry said Ukraine's alliances should not necessarily determine what happens to its people -- and that it was not a "zero sum" game.

"It is not a Russia or the United States or other choices," he said. "This is about people of Ukraine and Ukrainians making their choice about their future. And we want to work with Russia, with other countries, with everybody available to make sure this is peaceful from this day forward."

Yanukovych's decision to scrap a European Union trade deal in favor of one with Russia prompted the protests, which began in November.

The country's new leaders have said Kiev's return to European integration will be a priority. But in doing so, they risk an end to the aid that the Kremlin had bestowed on Yanukovych.

Interim Finance Minister Yury Kolobov proposed Monday that an international donor conference be held within two weeks. Ukraine, he said, will need $35 billion in foreign assistance by the end of 2015.