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Russia's head of state Vladimir Putin spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel about closer cooperation in the corona pandemic.
The phone call between the two politicians was about possible prospects for the joint production of vaccines, the Kremlin announced in Moscow on Tuesday.
The health ministries of both countries and specialists should continue discussions on this.
Details were initially not given.
A government spokesman in Berlin confirmed that the conversation was about fighting the pandemic.
So far, Germany only has vaccination doses from the German company Biontech and its US partner Pfizer.
An EU-wide approval of the corona vaccine from the US company Moderna could be decided on Wednesday.
The federal government is currently facing criticism that it has not ordered enough vaccine doses and that the vaccination campaign in Germany has started slowly.
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On December 5th, Russia started vaccinating risk groups with its self-developed corona vaccine "Sputnik V".
The fact that the Russian authorities had approved "Sputnik V" in August before the end of the last test phase was met with international criticism.
A second vaccine has now been registered.
Putin and Merkel congratulated each other on the New Year, according to the Kremlin.
The Russian President had previously expressed the hope that bilateral cooperation would develop in a New Year's letter to Merkel and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The phone call was therefore also about the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Relations between Berlin and Moscow are more tense than they have been in decades - among other things because of the poison attack on Kremlin critic Alexej Navalny and the hacking attack on the Bundestag in 2015. Russia rejects allegations of having anything to do with it.
The EU imposed sanctions on Russia, to which the gigantic empire responded with sanctions, primarily against German government officials.