MOSCOW: Russia has key interests in common with the United States and needs to work with it on a common agenda, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday in a television interview.

In his comments to the state-run Rossiya channel, Putin appeared to soften his anti-American rhetoric after being highly critical. Relations between Moscow and Washington and other Western powers have soured over the conflict in Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, sinking to an all-time low.

“We have disagreements on several issues on the international agenda. But at the same time there is something that unites us, that forces us to work together,” Putin said.

“I mean general efforts directed at making the world economy more democratic, measured and balanced, so that the world order is more democratic. We have a common agenda.”

Putin has in the past fiercely attacked the United States and the West in general, blaming them for the Ukraine crisis, which Russia says was the result of a Western-backed “coup” against Ukraine’s former leader Viktor Yanukovich.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev and the West that it is supporting pro-Russian rebels with troops and weapons in eastern Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have been killed since last April.

Meanwhile, masked men have toppled several statues of the Soviet leader Lenin in eastern Ukraine, authorities said Saturday, in a fresh show of anti-Russian sentiment.

Two statues were demolished at universities in the government-controlled city of Kharkiv late Friday, shown in videos posted on YouTube, a week after Kiev’s Parliament approved a law banning Soviet symbols in Ukraine.

In the video, a group of men hook a noose around the neck of the first statue and tug it to the ground where it shatters. Then they cut the lock on the gate to a second location and use a van to tug another statue down.

The bill, which also bans Nazi symbols, has yet to be signed into law by President Petro Poroshenko, but numerous Ukrainians have already begun destroying Communist-era monuments.