People participating in a rally outside the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv are plottinga a violent coup and are being funded from abroad, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said.

"The right to peaceful protest does not mean preparation for a violent coup undertaken by a small group of around 150-200 people who proclaimed themselves as the only righteous persons and are demanding that the state do only what they want. And they are being financed from abroad. I will prove that in due course," Lutsenko said at a regional development council meeting in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Automatic sawed-off weapons are being purchased and arms caches are being set up as part of preparations to commit a coup, he said.

"I say with all responsibility that they will not succeed," the prosecutor general said.

Ordinary citizens are not involved in such preparations, he said.

"Those taking part in this violent coup are 'guest actors' without any citizenship such as apatride Mikheil Saakashvili, who, while heading the [Odesa] state regional administration, got his subordinates to issue permanent residence permits to 20 citizens of Georgia as valuable figures of culture. Now these figures are sowing what they see as good, wise and eternal all over Ukraine," Lutsenko said.

These people with sawed-off guns are guarding Saakashvili, plotting a coup and using cars owned by a charitable foundation to which Odesa customs clients have paid contributions, he said.