Ukraine's acting interior minister said on Wednesday he had disbanded the elite Berkut riot police that protesters blamed for most of the deaths in last week's carnage in Kiev that claimed nearly 100 lives.

"The Berkut is no more," acting interior minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook account. "I have signed Decree No. 144, dated 25 February, 2014 on the dissolution of the Berkut special police units of civil defence."