Germany has a long history of tight relations with Moscow. In the middle of the Cold War, Chancellor Willy Brandt made a priority of warming up frosty relations with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Helmut Kohl and Boris Yeltsin got along famously. As did Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin, the latter pair seeming to go out of their way to find excuses for a meeting and an on-camera hug.

Ahead of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Thursday visit to Berlin, it seemed that he and Chancellor Angela Merkel were interested in carrying on the tradition of bonhomie. Just before jetting to Berlin, Medvedev signalled his support of press freedoms by torpedoing Putin's proposed toughening of Russian libel laws while Merkel wooed Medvedev by once again emphasizing the strategic nature of the German-Russian partnership.

Once in Berlin, Medvedev aimed much of his speech at NATO, warning that continued eastward expansion of the alliance could harm Western relations with Moscow. "There will be no confrontation, of course," he said. "But the price will be high. That will inflict very serious damage."

When it came to Merkel, however, Medvedev didn't arrive empty handed and announced an "energy partnership" with Berlin. The German chancellor responded by praising Russia's reliability as a gas and oil supplier and threw her support behind the controversial North Sea pipeline planned to deliver gas from Russia directly to Germany, thus bypassing Poland.

Despite the conviviality, however, German commentators on Friday are not entirely convinced that the German-Russian partnership is on solid footing at the moment.

Jörg Himmelreich, a Senior Trans-Atlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund, writes on SPIEGEL ONLINE:

"The list of differences between Europe and Russia is long and one doesn't need many powers of prognostication to see that the foreign policy of Russia will not change under the leadership tandem of Medvedev and Putin. Because of the economic importance of Germany and its close historical and cultural relations with Russia, Moscow sees Berlin as its entry point into European politics."

"Medvedev's visit to Germany was clearly a continuation of this relationship. But the German government, courted as it is by the Russians, runs the risk of allowing itself to become a mouthpiece of Russian interests. There is also a risk that Germany's relationship to Brussels and Washington will be negatively affected. Especially given the current situation which finds Germany without a clear Russia policy -- merely the Social Democrats' open-arms policy on the one hand and the Christian Democrats' wrist-slapping focus on Russian human rights deficits on the other."

"But Germany's focus on friendly relations with Russia comes at a price. Berlin loses credibility with its Eastern European neighbors by placing Russia's 'legitimate interests in the post-Soviet region' above the efforts by Ukraine and Georgia to free themselves from exactly that influence. If Germany and the European Union prove unable to extend European stability to its eastern neighbors, then their instability could extend to Europe."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is also skeptical that Medvedev will turn over a new leaf in Russian policy:

"Even if the new president manages to emancipate himself from the increasingly authoritarian policies of Putin, Moscow is still not likely to soften up on the foreign policy front. Now that the Russian state has stabilized, its image of itself as a world power -- complete with its old imperialist ambitions -- has made a comeback. And that image will stick around at least as long as Europe remains addicted to the gas and oil bubbling out of the ground in Siberia. It is not just former Soviet satellite states that are affected by this newfound confidence -- Russia's new partners feel it too. Whether the issue is Kosovo, Iran or the eastern expansion of NATO: Mr. Nyet is back."

The business daily Handelsblatt writes:

The future of German-Russian relations, "will very much depend on whether Medvedev follows up his friendly words with action. One thing is certain: He can't turn the Russian ship of state around in a few short weeks in office. Despite the large differences between appearance and behavior between him and his predecessor, he may even be uninterested in dramatic changes. The two are from the same team."

"But to see Medvedev as a weakling would be wrong. Just because one doesn't pound one's shoe on the table doesn't automatically mean that he can't get his way. Politeness and strength can go together. Thus, Germany should take him at his word. The German concept of a 'partnership of modernization' may not yet be anything more than rhetoric. But Medvedev's interest on working closely together with Germany appears to be genuine."