MOSCOW, March 11, /ITAR-TASS/. Allocation of funds to an illegitimate regime in Ukraine is unlawful and out of line with the US legal system, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on March 11.

“We have paid attention to the words of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich during his speech on March 11 in [the southern Russian city of] Rostov-on-Don that the plans of the US administration to provide $1 billion to the current authorities in Kiev are out of line with the existing American laws,” the ministry said in a statement.

“In line with the amendments introduced a few years ago to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, assistance may not be provided ‘to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.’ The norm is contained in Title 22, Paragraph 8422 of the United States Code,” it said.

“Thus, according to all criteria, allocation of funds to the illegitimate regime that seized power through violence is illegal and goes beyond the frames of the American legal system,” the statement said.

Yanukovich left Ukraine in February after a coup in his country. At Tuesday’s press conference in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, he said he remained the legitimate Ukrainian president and added that he had not “fled” the country but had been in Ukraine “during an anti-constitutional seizure of power by armed radicals.”

The Ukrainian president said “there were attempts to use terrorist methods” against him when he was in Ukraine but that the attempts “failed.”

Yanukovich also pledged to return to Kiev “as soon as circumstances permit” and said that “presidential elections announced for May 25 by a clique that seized power as a result of an anti-constitutional coup are illegitimate and unlawful and are out of line… with the Ukrainian Constitution.