KIEV, Ukraine — The papers were first spotted swirling in the eddies of a boat harbor on the sprawling compound of the former Ukrainian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, on the outskirts of Kiev. Intrigued, the protesters-turned-security guards who had taken over the grounds found a raft and began fishing the documents out of the water. Later, they recruited a diver to retrieve sunken nylon bags of files from the riverbed.

What they found were the waterlogged secrets of a government that nobody was ever supposed to lay eyes on, dumped by the president and his associates in the panicked last hours of his tenure, before he fled in a helicopter to eastern Ukraine.

The documents, which are still being dried out, along with others from the lavish home of the prosecutor general, are being posted on the Internet in Cyrillic for all to see. Together, they provide an increasingly detailed portrait of the final desperate weeks, days and hours of members of a besieged inner circle trying desperately to maintain their grip on a government they had plundered to an extent that shocked even corruption-weary Ukrainians.

They reveal details both mundane and alarming, showing in one instance how the private zoo, golf course and other luxuries on the president’s estate were paid for, and detailing in another plans — never carried out — to mobilize the army to clear protesters from the capital. Some were merely curious: From the river emerged the soggy titles to two Mercedes cars in the name of the woman suspected of being the mistress of the president, Lyubov Polezhay, a sister of the presidential cook.