Batkivschyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko believes that when resolving the issue of restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity and ending the war in Donbas it is necessary not to allow dividing the issues of occupation of part of the territory of Donbas and annexation of Crimea and start new negotiations on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum.

"We should not let the world divide the issues of Donbas and Crimea. We should not even allow the alleged 'shadow' legalization of the occupation of Crimea, and not give guarantors who, when Ukraine was deprived of nuclear weapons, gave us written guarantees that Ukraine will be protected," she said on the program "Freedom of Speech" on the ICTV channel late on Monday, July 9.

Tymoshenko noted that during meetings with top officials from the United States and Britain she asks why the Budapest Memorandum has currently been excluded from the negotiation process.

"It's a very important step to start a new negotiation process on the basis of the Budapest Memorandum," she said.

Tymoshenko stressed that it was necessary to strengthen the Ukrainian army, because more than 20 years it "was systematically disarmed."

"I saw how they, including the international community, gave us plans how to destroy our weapons, how to eliminate all our military capabilities, and when the country was brought to a state of zero in the defense system, war started against us. We need to have our own strong modern army," she said.

She also stressed the need to state clearly that "the Kremlin, Russia is an aggressor country that started absolutely unpredictable things, started a war against Ukraine."

"Today we have Crimea occupied and Donbas occupied. Today we have political prisoners and prisoners of war. We are in fact at war, and this aggression is continuing. We need to find an answer to the question of how to stop this aggression," she said.

In her opinion, despite the fact that negotiations have been going on for more than four years in the Minsk and Normandy formats "we are going deeper and deeper into the state of war, it continues very cruelly."

Tymoshenko believes that it is necessary to strengthen sanctions against Russia in all possible ways, because only under pressure certain agreements can be reached and "[Ukraine can] get rid of the aggressor on its territory."