KIEV, Ukraine — In case she didn’t make it clear when she returned from medical treatment in Germany last week when she tweeted, “Good day. I’m back. In every way,” Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister with the trademark blonde braid, let it be known on Thursday that she was ready to get down to business.

Tymoshenko announced she will run for president in the country's elections set for May 25.

The announcement from the leader of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution comes one month after she was released from prison following the ouster of her nemesis, ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, as Ukraine faces the prospect of a full-scale military attack from Russia.

A charismatic but divisive figure, Tymoshenko surprised few in saying she would enter the race in which she will almost certainly be a leading contender. Others include businessman Petro Poroshenko, known as the Chocolate King, and former world champion boxer-turned-politician Vitali Klitschko, aka Dr. Iron Fist.

“I will be the candidate of Ukrainian unity,” Tymoshenko, 53, said during a press conference in the courtyard of her Batkhivshcyna party office in Kiev. “The west and center of Ukraine has always voted for me, but I was born in the east, in Dnepropetrovsk.”

Image: Sergei Chuzavkov/Associated Press

The two-time prime minister (2005, 2007-2010), imprisoned in 2011 for abuse of power in a case widely seen by the West as politically motivated, also said that she would fight “enemy number one for Ukraine” – Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russian troops seized Crimea in February, with Moscow backing a referendum for the peninsula to secede from Ukraine. Russia annexed it last week. Since then, Russian troops have amassed on the Ukrainian borders, raising fears of an invasion of mainland Ukraine.

“I think we have to do everything to stop the aggressor, and also return Crimea (to Ukraine),” Tymoshenko said.

If elected, Tymoshenko said that she will rebuild the nation’s defenses.

“Most Ukrainians feel anxious about war, and want to feel safe in their country,” she said. “I think I can create a powerful system of national defense, a modern and effective army and take all steps to arm the army with the most modern weapons. I am convinced that I can take all actions to stand up to aggression and return Crimea.”

Tymoshenko said she wouldn’t let Putin’s troops trample over across mainland Ukraine.

“To implement all my ideas as to how to stop the aggressor, I have to have power,” she said. “I am convinced we're not going to allow the aggressor even a few steps into continental Ukraine.”

Well versed in political theater and never one to shy away from controversy, Tymoshenko embraced the political firestorm that was unleashed last week when her phone conversation with a member of parliament was leaked on YouTube. In it, she says she would shoot Russian troops in Crimea herself for annexing the peninsula.

“No fucking way they would get Crimea from me,” she can be heard saying.

Tymoshenko admitted the call was real, but said that Russian security forces had doctored the tape to make it appear as though she urged for nuclear weapons to be used against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. Tymoshenko lost a presidential runoff against the deposed Yanukovych in 2010 by just 3.5 percentage points.

Taras Berezovets, director of Kiev-based Berta Communications and a former political consultant for Tymosehnko from 2007-2010, predicted in February that the former prime minister would soon officially enter the presidential race.

“She wants revenge,” he told Mashable at the time. “And she is the best candidate for this job.”

Speaking on a popular Ukrainian political talk show last week, Tymoshenko said her old rival Yanukovych “tried to break my spine physically and psychologically… he only succeeded physically.”

Tymoshenko, also known as the “gas princess,” a nickname she earned for amassing a huge share of the industry through murky deals in Ukraine’s tumultuous 1990s, made her billions alongside ex-Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, a corrupt politician and businessman who spent 10 years in an American federal prison for money laundering and other convictions.

Her history with the so-called “old guard” has led many Ukrainians to not trust her. But Tymoshenko has for years said that she separated herself from dirty politics and came clean.

“The previous government searched for corruption in my actions and could not find any,” Tymoshenko said, referring to the failed attempts by Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to find evidence of corruption in her actions while in office. “I passed the corruption audit of Yanukovych and Azarov. I have the moral right (to fight corruption) because even Yanukovych could not find corruption in my actions.”

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