The streets around Kiev's Independence Square continued to be tense on Saturday (February 15), a day after Ukrainian authorities provisionally freed the last 234 detained protesters under an amnesty offer aimed at defusing protracted street unrest, but activists decried the move as a sham and pressed for further concessions.

Though police released the last of 234 detained protesters on Friday (February 14), criminal charges have not been lifted against them. They face prosecution at some point in the future for participating in "mass disorder" - a charge carrying a sentence of several years in prison - unless their comrades leave occupied buildings and clear blocked roads.

President Viktor Yanukovich's government has fixed Monday as the deadline for all occupied municipal buildings to be cleared of protesters and barricades to be removed from city centre roads in the capital Kiev in exchange for the release of the detainees and a possible future pardon.

Yanukovich neg