Hundreds of thousands of pro-EU Ukrainians rallied in Kiev on Sunday for a new protest aimed at forcing President Viktor Yanukovych to resign after he sparked fury by rejecting an EU pact under Kremlin pressure.

Waving EU and Ukrainians flags as well as the red-and-black banners of the wartime anti-communist Ukrainian Insurgent Army, around 200,000 demonstrators filled Kiev's iconic Independence Square to bursting point.

Outraged Ukrainians rallied in central Kiev on Saturday after President Viktor Yanukovych discussed a new strategic partnership agreement with Russia's Vladimir Putin upon rejecting a historic EU deal.

Several thousand supporters of Western integration braved swirling winds and a heavy snowfall to maintain control of the capital's iconic Independence Square for the seventh successive day.

Russian ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin stressed that since the eruption of the conflict in Syria, Moscow had supported Lebanon's policy of disassociation, reported As Safir newspaper on Saturday.

He asked: “Why should we ask Hizbullah to withdraw its fighters from Syria when two years ago our calls on armed groups from northern Lebanon to withdraw was left unheeded?”

President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych met on Friday in the Russian city of Sochi for unannounced talks to discuss signing a strategic partnership treaty, Ukraine's presidency said.

"Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in Sochi," said the office of Yanukovych, who is returning from his three-day visit to China. "The heads of state discussed issues of trade and economic cooperation in various industries of the economy and preparation for a future treaty on a strategic partnership."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is set to visit Tehran next week to discuss bilateral relations and Iran's nuclear program after its leadership agreed a landmark deal on limiting enrichment.

"A visit by Sergei Lavrov to Iran is planned for December 10 to 11," a spokeswoman for the foreign ministry told Agence France Presse.

Russia voiced outrage Friday at charges in the United States against 49 current and former Russian diplomats and their wives over a $1.5 million fraud, saying it could not understand why the U.S. had gone public with the allegations.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a statement to Russian news agencies that Moscow had many claims against the behavior of U.S. diplomats in Moscow but had preferred not to bring them into the public sphere.

Canada is expected to file an application with the United Nations on Friday seeking to vastly expand its Arctic sea boundary, setting it on a collision course with Russia and Denmark.

Orders from the prime minister to eventually also include the North Pole in the claim, revealed in a recent news report, is expected to rankle Moscow and Copenhagen, which also have their eyes on the region.

The United States on Thursday urged Ukrainian authorities to heed the demands of thousands of pro-EU demonstrators, as protesters kept up a blockade of top government buildings and occupation of a central Kiev square.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, speaking at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Kiev, said Washington stood with the Ukrainians dreaming of a European future after two weeks of opposition protests in Kiev and western Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday denounced European "hysterics" over Ukraine's rejection of a historic EU deal that would have pulled it out of Moscow's orbit for the first time.

"This situation is linked to the hysterics that certain Europeans went into over the fact that Ukraine, using its sovereign right, decided at this stage not to sign certain agreements that Ukrainian experts and authorities found disadvantageous," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying in Kiev.

Sweden has provided the U.S. with "unique" intelligence on Russia's leadership, according to new documents leaked by U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden and revealed Thursday by Swedish public broadcaster SVT.

The documents indicate that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) sees Sweden's signals intelligence agency, FRA, as a "leading partner" in the surveillance of telecom and Internet traffic, particularly from Russia.