Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has announced that, to settle the crisis in Ukraine, he will initiate the reinstatement of the 2004 constitution and call early presidential elections.

"I am announcing steps that need to be made in order to restore peace and avoid more victims of the standoff. I am declaring that I will initiate early presidential elections. I will also initiate the reinstatement of the 2004 constitution with the redistribution of powers in favor of a parliamentary republic," Yanukovych said in a statement available on the presidential website on Friday.

Yanukovych also called for starting the procedure of forming a government of national confidence.

The president said he has agreed to take these steps because, "in these tragic days, when Ukraine has incurred so many heavy losses, when people died on both sides of the barricades," he considers it his duty "to declare in loving memory of the dead that there is nothing more important than human life."

"And there are no such steps that we could not have made together to restore peace in Ukraine," he said.