AP photo
By Mick Krever, CNN
(CNN) - If diplomacy fails to persuade Russia to withdraw its forces from the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the world should apply the "strongest means" on Russia, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview Monday.
Amanpour asked Tymoshenko if she was calling for the West to use military force against Russia.
She would not directly answer the question, saying that she "cannot solve this issue," but she issued an appeal to help Ukraine.
"I am asking all the world, personally every world leader, to use all the possibilities in order to avoid Ukraine losing Crimea."
Ex-prime minister calls on world to act
Russia has complete "operational control" over Crimea, a senior U.S. official has told CNN.
This was Tymoshenko's first international interview since her release from prison just over a week ago, following a truce between then-President Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. She spent
the last years behind bars on what the West called politically motivated charges.
Ukraine is just "one step" away from war, Tymoshenko said.
The Russian Duma, or parliament, has started debate on "the draft of the law of annexation of Crimea from Ukraine," she told Amanpour.
The Duma website confirms that a draft law has been put forward on defining the process whereby a country or territory can seek to be annexed by Russia.
Tymoshenko on Russian draft annex bill
If "Ukraine is left on its own and is given to Russia," Tymoshenko said from Kiev, "then the world will change."
"Not only politics and life in Ukraine will change - the politics and life will change practically everywhere in the world."
She called on the world's superpowers to bring a solution to the crisis.
Russia issued an ultimatum to Ukrainian forces in Crimea to clear out by Tuesday morning or face a "military storm," Ukrainian officials said Monday. But a spokesman for the Russian Black Sea Fleet said there are no plans to storm Ukrainian military units in Crimea, according to the Interfax news agency.
Earlier, Russia rejected accusations that it was acting aggressively toward Ukraine.
"We call for a responsible approach, to put aside geopolitical calculations, and above all to put the interests of the Ukrainian people first," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a U.N. human rights meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.
Ukraine's new interim government has mobilized troops and called up military reservists, but Tymoshenko said her country did not want a repeat of Russia's 2008 war with the country of Georgia over the separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
"We are perfectly aware of the balance of forces between Russia and Ukraine," she said. "We cannot put people to death."
Russia's military dwarfs Ukraine's - with 845,000 total troops in 2012 versus Ukraine's 130,000 - and Russia spends nearly 50 times as much on its military.
"Every response to Russian aggression will be used by the aggressor just to destroy Ukraine," Tymoshenko said.
She said Russia was issuing an ultimatum to Ukraine to reinstall the former, Russia-sympathetic President Yanukovych in order to stop the aggression.
She said that the return of the "corrupted" and "blood-stained" leader was "not acceptable."
"All Ukraine is against it," she said. "All Ukraine will not support it."
Even those in eastern Ukraine, she told Amanpour, are against the aggression...
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko believes that the gas agreements signed in 2009 were correct. She suggested that by 2020 Ukraine would stop using Russian natural gas.
"I believe that the gas agreements were correct," said Tymoshenko.
"I believe that the gas agreements were correct," said Tymoshenko.
She also suggested the "Kharkiv agreements" that extended the presence of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine should be abolished.
In 2010, in Kharkov, Viktor Yanukovych and Dmitry Medvedev signed the agreement that extended the presence of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in the Crimea for 25 years. In addition, Ukraine received a 30-percent discount on gas.
Noteworthy, it was said on Tuesday, March 4, that Ukraine would be deprived of the discount on Russian gas as early as in April of the current year.
Ukraine has to make a choice
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former prime minister, urged the West on Wednesday to ramp up pressure on Russia to force it to withdraw troops from Crimea.
In an interview with The Associated Press two weeks after she was released from jail, Tymoshenko, 53, said the United States and Britain must engage directly with Russia and use "the most powerful tools" to ensure that Russian troops leave the Crimean Peninsula, which they have been occupying for nearly a week after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Tymoshenko said that as the signatories of a 1994 treaty, which guarantees Ukraine's security in exchange for it giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Britain must now deal directly with Russia. She said Ukraine cannot enter any negotiations with Moscow while Russian troops are pointing guns at its soldiers.
"It is up to them (the U.S. and the UK) to choose the methods to stop the aggressor. But they must do it immediately," Tymoshenko said at her office in downtown Kiev. The West must do "everything that will stop the aggressor. Period."
Tymoshenko spent two-and-a-half years in jail on charges of abuse of office that the West condemned as politically motivated.
During the interview, she refused to say if she plans to enter Ukraine's May 25 presidential election. Although she now holds no formal post, she is believed to wield significant political influence since her closest ally, Oleksandr Turchynov, is the acting president.
Tymoshenko, who suffers from a back condition, walked slowly leaning on walking aids. But clad in an elegant grey jacket with her blond braid wrapped around her head in her trademark peasant style, she looked much better than two weeks ago. That's when Tymoshenko appeared on a stage in a large protest camp in the center of Kiev, sitting in a wheel chair and looking pale and worn out.
Tymoshenko called for a quick signing of a political and economic treaty with the European Union. When Yanukovych shelved it, that promoted the mass protests in Kiev that eventually led him to flee the country for Russia last month.
Once the Russia-Ukraine standoff is over, Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is currently based in Crimea as part of a leasing agreement, must leave, said Tymoshenko.
"Today it is obvious that basically the Black Sea fleet has become the source of a war ... a ground for seizing our state," she said.
Tymoshenko added that Ukraine must not make any compromises to appease Russia. "We believe that the aggressor must leave without any conditions," she told AP.
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