Big and burly with two convictions for assault, Viktor Yanukovych is hard to miss. But after a day of high drama and intrigue, the whereabouts of the ousted Ukrainian president were a mystery.
One report had him ejected from a charter flight at Donetsk airport in his native east. An aide said he had been in the northeastern city of Kharkiv all day, though he failed to appear at a meeting of regional governors. A taxi driver in Kiev swore he was in the United Arab Emirates.
The mystery did little to help loyalists who stuck to the line that their leader was still the president, even after parliament voted to remove him in the climax to three months of turmoil and several days of carnage over Ukraine's allegiance to Europe or Russia.