Investigators have established that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych personally ordered the crackdown on the Euromaidan protest in Kyiv on November 30, 2013, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) has announced.

"The investigation has established that the decision to break up the Maidan [student Maidan on November 30, 2013] and to do so by force was made directly by the country's then-president," Head of the Prosecutor General's Office specialized investigations department Serhiy Horbatiuk said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

It was also established that "an instruction to put this plan into practice was issued to Ukraine's former Interior Minister [Vitalyi Zakharchenko] and [former] National Security and Defense Council Secretary Andriy Kliuyev," he added.

He added that these people, in turn, gave their orders to then deputy secretary of the National Security Council Volodymyr Syvkovych, former chief of Kyiv police Valeriy Koriak, and former Head of Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) Oleksandr Popov.

Berkut riot police were instructed to carry out the dispersal of the Maidan, Horbatiuk said.

The PGO representative said that there were no legal grounds to disperse the Maidan, and there were was no relevant court ruling. The pretext was that the authorities needed to set up a New Year's tree in the central square of Kyiv.

"As the result of such criminal actions, over 300 people were driven out of the square, 84 people, including 17 students, were beaten up," Horbatiuk said.

Accusations were also brought against Ukraine's former leadership over the December 1, 2013 events on Kyiv's Bankova Street, where law enforcement personnel used violence against protesters and journalists, he said.

"As for the December 1 events, accusations were brought up against former President of Ukraine Yanukovych, [former Interior Minister] Zakharchenko, his deputy [Serhiy] Ratushniak, Kyiv's police and security chief [Petro] Fedchuk, as well as a Berkut commander from one of its territorial units who has already been arrested," Horbatiuk said.

Evidence is now being collected against several other Berkut units involved in those violent actions in order to subsequently charge their members, he said.

The most violent treatment of protesters on Kyiv's central Independence Square (Maidan) overnight into December 11, 2013 came from Berkut special operations units, who were sent to the square unofficially, Horbatiuk said.

"The majority of violent actions were committed by Berkut units who were not officially prosecuted [for this]," he said, referring to the events overnight into December 11, 2013, when law enforcement personnel sought to violently suppress a rally on Independence Square.

Accusations in connection with these events were also filed against Yanukovych, Zakharchenko, Ratushniak and the commanders of Berkut units "whose soldiers used violence, and protesters suffered directly as a result of their actions," he said.

Investigators have also established that in the winter of 2013-2014, officers of Ukraine's Interior Ministry and State Traffic Police Inspectorate systematically beat and arrested 'AutoMaidan' activists, Horbatiuk said.

"It was a systemic professional duty of the traffic police department, the Interior Ministry, as well as individual judges being coordinated by the presidential [Yanukovych's] administration," he said.

Charges filed against 40 people, including 38 Interior Ministry employees and two judges, have already been forwarded to courts, he added.