"As the Russian president stressed at his press conference April 2 in London, very good personal relations have been established. At the same time personal relations is not everything when the talk is about relations between states," Sergei Lavrov told government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
"There can be good personal relations, he said, but interstate relations do not experience it. It has been like this between Moscow and Washington. But now there are grounds to hope that personal relations will help resolve interstate issues," Lavrov said.
Medvedev said Thursday that he saw in Obama a constructive individual who can honestly answer difficult questions.
The presidents met for the first time before the G20 summit in London that brought together the heads of industrial and major developing countries to discuss measures to resolve the global economic crisis.
"I'm glad I got acquainted with the U.S. president. It was a good meeting," Medvedev said at a news conference after the summit when asked about Wednesday's meeting with Obama.
"It seemed to me that we succeeded in making contact. Of course, it was our first meeting, and we will have another meeting in Moscow later this year, but I can absolutely say that we see many issues the same way," he said.
Medvedev also said that Obama was a person who could listen and give a full answer to difficult questions, such as on the planned U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe and the expansion of NATO.
Washington has claimed that the anti-missile defense would protect against rocket attacks from rogue states such as Iran, but Moscow sees the shield as a threat to its national security.
Medvedev said the United States was ready to discuss different options for the missile shield, a step the Russian president called "important," adding that the previous U.S. administration had "a completely different approach."
