Thousands of people gathered in Kiev’s main square on Sunday to protest against President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s deal with Moscow to grant autonomy to Ukraine’s pro-Russian, rebel-held east in efforts to end a five-year conflict.
In the first breakthrough towards a peace deal in years, envoys from Moscow and Kiev agreed at talks on Tuesday to an election schedule for the Donbass region and on legislation giving it special status.
Ukraine also agreed to call back its forces from the contact line with separatist fighters.
But for many Ukrainians, these measures represent a huge betrayal by Mr Zelenskiy, who took power in April after a landslide election win.
The war in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 13,000 people since April 2014.
“This is the beginning of the full capitulation of Ukraine,” said "Roman", 53, who fought in Donbass as a volunteer.
Politician Yana Zinkevych, who belongs to the previous president Petro Poroshenko’s party European Solidarity, was among those who addressed the rally.
“These are the things that protect Russia’s interests and not ours," Mr Zinkevych told the crowd. "We have to fight and prevent its implementation."
Last week’s deal opened the way for a resumption of top-level peace talks to end the conflict.
Mr Zelenskiy said last week that he would discuss a peace deal for Donbass in coming talks with Russia, Germany and France.
He said any elections in Donbass would be held only after any Russian troops had left. Russia denies having troops there.
As things stand, Mr Zelenskiy’s party, Servant of the People, which holds a majority of 251 seats in the Ukrainian Parliament, is still short of the 300 votes needed to change the constitution and give autonomy to Donbass.
“We heard that the Parliament must vote for some special status of those territories,” said Inna Sovsun, an MP for the opposition Golos (Voice) party.
"We will do our best so that the Parliament does not support any special status.
“The only formula that we are ready to accept is the formula that was written in our Constitution, the formula for which thousands of people died. This is the formula of a united sovereign Ukraine.”
