CRI听力:Moscow Wants to Improve Ties with Washington: Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow wants to improve ties with Washington, saying Russia is not interested in a continued battle over sanctions.

Lavrov has made the comments during a televised interview, saying the Russia and the US need a reset.

"We are absolutely interested in our relations normalising, but it wasn't us who destroyed them. And now, there needs to probably be, like a, I don't know whether Americans would call it 'reset', when after a serious rollback in relations with the United States in the last years of the younger Bush, the Obama administration came up with the term 'reset'."

Russian and U.S relations are said to be at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russia's takeover of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

The U.S. and its allies have imposed a series of economic sanctions on Russia for what Washington sees as Moscow's support for the rebels in Ukraine.

Russia has repeatedly denied it is supporting the Ukrainian rebels.

A ceasefire has been in place in eastern Ukraine for a few weeks, despite sporadic clashes.