Ukraine crisis: Yanukovych regrets bloodshed in Kiev

Ukraine's former President Viktor Yanukovych has said he accepts some responsibility for the killings that led to his overthrow in February 2014.

"I don't deny my responsibility," he told BBC Newsnight, when asked about the shooting of demonstrators in Kiev's Maidan Square.

He never ordered the security forces to open fire, he said, but admitted he had not done enough to prevent bloodshed.

It is his first Western media interview since the civil war erupted last year.

"I did not give any orders [to use firearms], that was not my authority… I was against any use of force, let alone the use of firearms, I was against bloodshed.

"But the members of the security forces fulfilled their duties according to existing laws. They had the right to use weapons," he said.

More than 100 protesters died in the clashes on Kiev's central square, where huge crowds had confronted police for months.

A year after the bloodshed some witnesses told the BBC that fatal shots had also been fired at the police.

In February 2014 Yanukovych was whisked away by Russian special forces to a safe haven in Russia.