Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said there has been no change in his relations with Vladimir Putin since he left office as president.

"Speaking of my relations with the president - and I have made lots of comments on this - nothing has changed since I have taken the government job and my colleague Vladimir Putin has been elected the Russian president," Medvedev said in an interview with the Finnish media ahead of a visit to Finland.

"We have a long-standing relationship. I said lately when I was congratulating him on his birthday that we have been acquainted for 21 or 22 years, which is a long period for every person's life. In my case, that is practically my entire adult life, my conscious experience. That is long, as you may guess. So, we are all right," Medvedev said.

The government and the president have a normal working relationship, the kind of relations the president and the government should have, he said.

"There is nothing extraordinary [about these relations], same as there is nothing extraordinary about people joining [and leaving] the government - such things happen in all states, and our government is not an exception," Medvedev said.

He said that reasons why certain persons had joined or quit the government were well known. "The reasons are absolutely public: somebody's nerves are in rags because that is a difficult job and people say, "We are not prepared to work here". Such things happen. That is absolutely normal," he said.

"In other cases, transparency must be ensured for a particular inquiry or particular decisions. That is also absolutely normal. The same things happen in other countries," the prime minister said.