Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he views U.S. President Donald Trump's opinion about the conflict in Ukraine as "a qualitative change" compared to that of Barack Obama.
Lavrov told the state-owned news agency TASS on February 7 that Trump's position on the situation in Ukraine is to monitor how the two sides are behaving in the conflict.
"The Obama administration...tried to demand everything from us and absolve [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko," Lavrov said.
In a recent interview to Fox News, Trump said the United States has insufficient information about the developments in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in the conflict, despite evidence to the contrary of financial and military assistance to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine has killed at least 9,750 people since breaking out in 2014, just weeks after Russia illegally annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
