Russian President Vladimir Putin praised US President Donald Trump on Friday, describing the leader as “the light at the end of the tunnel” for struggling Moscow-Washington relations.

"As for our relations with the United States, they are at an extremely low level since World War II", Putin said at an event in Sarov, a closed city about 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Moscow that has served as a base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s.

“But with the arrival of President Trump, I think that a light at the end of the tunnel has finally appeared.”

Putin also commended Trump’s leadership qualities and said he hoped that the first steps had been taken to ensure the “full-scale restoration” of Russia-US ties.

He said that Russian companies were already discussing plans with “American partners” on opportunities for cooperation across the Arctic and in Alaska in areas such as liquified natural gas.

The comments come the same day as Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, appeared in a taped interview for NBC’s Sunday show “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” saying that there were no plans for a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – a proposal that Trump has repeatedly floated to end the three-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine.