MOSCOW, June 13. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes that the new Ukrainian government would actively engage in restoring relations between Russia and Ukraine, adding that the process of normalizing relations was inevitable.

"Restoring our relations is inevitable. It [the present situation] is simply impossible between two parts of the same ethnicity, or, in other words, between two brotherly nations," Putin said in an interview to the Mir channel, a fragment of which was posted on YouTube on Wednesday night.

"It does not matter what kind of relations we had with the political establishment, with the political elites of the past, with, so to speak, the individuals whose lives centered around personal success, profit and preservation of their wealth, accumulated at the expense of the people of Ukraine and kept somewhere abroad. <...> But at least I hope that the new government is not restricted by those limitations, feels free to act and is relying on the confidence bestowed by the people of Ukraine upon their newly elected president, that it will be able to take active measures both to restore relations between Ukraine and Russia and to solve domestic problems," the Russian president went on.

Putin also expressed hope that Ukraine’s new political leadership would not try to conceal its reluctance to solve domestic problems behind "Russophobic thoughts and ideas.".