A police helicopter belonging to Ukraine's Interior Ministry crashed shortly after takeoff Tuesday in the central part of the country, killing five people on board, officials said.

The Mi-8 helicopter slammed into the ground at about 1400 GMT (9 a.m. EST) just after taking off from an airport in the city of Alexandria in the Kirovograd region, about 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of the capital, Kiev, ministry spokesman Serhiy Burlakov said.

Ukrainian health officials say 37 people have died from the severe cold spell that hit the country this month.

Temperatures have dropped as low as minus-17 C (2 F).

Russia's security council chief Nikolai Patrushev said Tuesday he did not see any grounds for a popular uprising in the country but warned the Kremlin would not allow opposition protests to wreak havoc.

"In today's Russia there are no preconditions for possible 'color' revolutions and we are certain that we will not allow the realization of such scenarios in our country," Patrushev told tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The beheaded bodies of a Ukrainian judge and three members of his family have been found in their apartment in the eastern city of Kharkiv, police said Sunday as they searched for those responsible for the killings.

The gruesome crime scene was uncovered a day earlier by a relative, who found the bodies of Judge Vladimir Trofimov, his wife Irina, their son Sergei, and the son's girlfriend, Marina Zoueva.

Violent scuffles broke out in the Ukrainian parliament Thursday as dozens of opposition and pro-government lawmakers brawled for a second day in a chamber notorious for its physical confrontations.

Deputies in suits and shirtsleeves climbed on tables, shouted and grappled with opponents as a protest against the practice of lawmakers pressing electronic buttons to vote for absentee colleagues descended into violence.

Activists from Ukraine's feminist group Femen staged a topless anti-corruption protest on Wednesday outside the ex-Soviet country's newly-elected parliament as a fight erupted between lawmakers inside.

The opening session of the Verkhkovna Rada began in a typically raucous fashion, after the October 28 parliamentary elections which were condemned by the West as a setback for democracy.

Ukraine's main opposition alliance Friday named imprisoned ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko, who recently staged a hunger strike protest, as its candidate for president in the 2015 elections.

The decision was reached at a congress of opposition leaders including members of Tymoshenko's party and that of ex-parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the alliance said in a statement.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Monday accepted the resignation of his close ally Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and the entire government, the presidency said.

The surprise move comes as a new parliament prepares to meet after October 28 legislative elections which raised new concerns about democratic standards under Yanukovych.

Andrei Mandrykin, an inmate at Prison No. 85 outside Kiev, has HIV. He looks ghostly and much older than his 35 years. But Mandrykin is better off than tens of thousands of his countrymen, because is he receiving treatment amid what the World Health Organization says is the worst AIDS epidemic in Europe.

Ahead of World AIDS Day on Saturday, international organizations have urged the Ukrainian government to increase funding for treatment and do more to prevent HIV from spreading from high-risk groups into the mainstream population, where it is even harder to manage and control.

Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has agreed to end her hunger strike, her doctor said on Thursday, over two weeks after she stopped eating in protest at alleged fraud in polls won by the country's ruling party.

The ex-premier and 2004 Orange revolution leader has been refusing food since October 29 as she serves out a seven-year sentence for abuse of power while in office which she says is part of a political vendetta by her arch-foe President Victor Yanukovych.