Ukraine's former prime minister and Batkivschyna party leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, admitted speaking by telephone with Party of Regions MP Nestor Shufrych, but said that her words in a certain part of this taped conversation had been edited to discredit her.

"Indeed, this conversation took place, but [Tymoshenko's remarks] about eight million Russians in Ukraine were edited. What I actually said was the Russians in Ukraine are Ukrainians," Tymoshenko said on her Twitter page on Monday.

The recording of a two-minute telephone conversation was posted online earlier in which a female voice resembling Tymoshenko's discusses the situation in Ukraine with Shufrych and allegedly suggests using nuclear weapons against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.