He told me a lot about her, that she was a very good person with everybody and that she was very loving.

ROMO: Alvarenga also told Cordova's mother how the two fishermen spent the time while drifting in the open sea. Cordova, an evangelical Christian, told the Salvadoran fisherman about his faith. They would pray and sing together, Alvarenga says, as they both clinged to the hope of being found alive and rescued in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

ALVARENGA (through translator): He taught me how to pray. He taught me how to sing. I would ask him if he went to church, and he said yes. Since he was a little boy he would go with his mother and step father.

ROMO: Alvarenga says there are things Cordova toldchose to leave Ukraine and join Russia.

Now that move was met by sanctions from the west on some Russian and Ukrainian political figures.

Now western powers say -- in Ukraine, they both say that the vote was illegal.

I want to take you live to Kiev now. CNN's Ivan Watson is following events on the ground for us. And he joins me now. And Ivan, Vladimir Putin, he spoke about an hour ago. He called Crimea an inalienable part of Russia. He criticized the interim government. What is Kiev thinking right now?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Ukrainian interim authorities, they insist that Crimea was, is, and will always be part of Ukrainian territory. When I spoke with the prime minister of Ukraine in an interview yesterday he said