People close to Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president and the leader of the Movement of New Forces, have been buying weapons, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said.

"I would like to praise the law-enforcement system, which was able to detain people close to Saakashvili and [his associate Siverion] Dangadze who were buying weapons during preparations for these rallies," Lutsenko said at an evening session in parliament in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Those people "were creating caches right on Hrushevskoho Street [in downtown Kyiv], and this was established during investigative activities, [and they] were preparing for bloodshed during these rallies in order to draw Ukraine into the chaos of domestic conflict," he said.