Where did Yanukovych seek asylum, and how was the transfer of power formalized?
The deal reached on February 21 included the restoration of the 2004 constitutional reform, early presidential elections no later than December, and an amnesty for protesters. The latter were to vacate all the occupied government buildings and surrender all illegally captured firearms.
The authorities promised to refrain from using violence. The foreign ministers of the three EU countries signed the document as witnesses, but the Russian mediator refused to sign, probably in order to leave Putin the option of rejecting it as a concession extracted from Yanukovych under duress. As foreign mediators were leaving the building, however, they too beheld the puzzling sight of riot police deserting their posts. Neither they nor the opposition leaders realized that this signaled the immediate collapse of the Yanukovych regime.That evening, political elites started defecting to the opposition. Parliament voted to restore the 2004 constitutional reform, suspend the minister of the interior, and return all troops to their barracks. Yanukovych escaped to his opulent residence in Mezhyhiria, just outside of Kyiv, where his staff began loading valuables into black, armored SUVs. Still not realizing what was happening, the leaders of the opposition went to the Maidan late at night to obtain symbolic approval of the deal. They were booed. Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh and the self-proclaimed “captains" of Maidan Self-Defense objected that the agreement did not go far enough. Supported by the crowds, they called for the arrest of the minister of the interior and the immediate resignation of Yanukovych.
On February 22 the president flew to the eastern city of Kharkiv, but failing to find much support there, he went underground. Most ministers and other politicians who were closely involved in the regime's corrupt schemes also escaped.
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, many of Yanukovych's former political supporters voted together with the opposition to remove the president from power for abandoning his duties. They chose this clause, which is not in the Constitution, over a lengthy impeachment procedure that would have involved laying criminal charges and a review by the Constitutional Court. The parliament elected Oleksandr Turchynov of the Fatherland Party as the new speaker and acting president. It also scheduled presidential elections for May 25, 2014, and made legislative changes to annul Yulia Tymoshenko's conviction. The Party of Regions issued a statement distancing itself from the ousted president.In the meantime, Yanukovych made his way secretly to the Crimea, where he apparently sought shelter at a Russian naval base and was subsequently taken to Russia. On February 27 the Russian government announced that it was granting asylum to Yanukovych, whom it still considered the legitimate president of Ukraine. In subsequent months Yanukovych gave several press conferences denouncing the “neo-Nazi coup” in the Russian city of Rostov- on-the-Don, just east of his traditional power base in the Donbas. Reportedly, he purchased a luxurious estate outside Moscow, which he now calls home. The new Ukrainian prosecutor general has charged Yanukovych in connection with the shootings of protesters, and in January 2015 Interpol placed the former president on its wanted list in connection with embezzlement charges.