Britain's new Prime Minister Liz Truss should first deal with her immediate neighbors and, in particular, determine her position on French leader Emmanuel Macron before looking far beyond her borders, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Lavrov said: "But I think that before Liz Truss finally formulates her deliberately negative attitude towards Russia, her first priority must be to settle accounts with her immediate neighbors, including deciding at last whether President Macron is her friend or her enemy. This question is still up in the air, unanswered. I would think it would be more important for the two neighbors to sort this out than to cast their eyes far beyond their own borders," Lavrov said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Truss was elected head of Britain's Conservative Party last Monday and became the country's prime minister on Tuesday.