“It’s a confusing situation,” Mr. Peskov said in a telephone interview from Sochi, where Mr. Putin attended the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. “We have to figure out what we are facing there. Is it a coup or what?”

Image President Vladimir V. Putin during the closing ceremony of the Sochi Olympic Games. Credit... Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti, via Reuters

Mr. Putin has not yet made any public statements about the latest events, as is often the case when he is confronted by unexpected challenges or crises. “Let’s wait and see,” Mr. Peskov said.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Yanukovych have spoken several times in recent weeks to discuss the situation there, but Mr. Peskov said he did not know whether they had spoken since Saturday, when Mr. Yanukovych’s legitimacy evaporated and he fled Kiev, leaving protesters swarming through his opulent presidential compound.

It is clear that Mr. Putin has followed the crisis intently, even as he attended to the Olympic festivities that he clearly has relished as a symbol of a new Russia. On Friday he met with his national security advisers on Friday and a day later dispatched two Russian lawmakers to a regional party congress in Eastern Ukraine that had been called to rally opposition to the new political authorities in Kiev.

Vladimir Lukin, the envoy Mr. Putin sent to Kiev at Mr. Yanukovych’s request during the negotiations with the Europeans, returned to Moscow and criticized the European foreign ministers for siding with “the nationalist-revolutionary terrorist Maidan,” referring to the square that has been the nucleus of the protests, and not the “legitimate government that they recognized.”

Only hours before the closing ceremony in Sochi, Mr. Putin spoke by telephone with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. The Kremlin said in a statement only that they discussed the situation in Ukraine, Germany’s foreign office went further, saying that the two leaders agreed that “the territorial integrity of Ukraine must be preserved.”

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, spoke with Secretary of State John Kerry for a second time in two days, and Russia later announced that it had recalled its ambassador in Kiev because of “the deteriorating situation” in the country. The State Department released a statement saying that Mr. Kerry expressed support for the votes in Ukraine’s Parliament and called on Russia to support the transition now underway.