COPENHAGEN (AFP) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Copenhagen Tuesday for the first state visit by a Russian or Soviet head of state to Denmark in more than 45 years.

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Medvedev, who flew in from Norway, was met at the Kastrup airport by Queen Margrethe, her husband Prince Consort Henrik and their son, Crown Prince Frederik, along with Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen.

The two-day visit marks a warming of relations which turned icy following Danish criticism of Moscow's handling of the Chechen issue in the 1990s.

In 2002 former Russian president Vladimir Putin called off an official visit to protest Copenhagen's decision not to extradite Chechen separatist Akhmed Zakayev, who had come to the Danish capital for the first Chechen World Conference.

Since then Denmark has tried to rekindle a friendly relationship with Moscow.

In 2006 the Scandinavian country allowed the remains of empress Maria Feodorovna, who was born a Danish princess and was the mother of Russia's last tsar Nicholas II, to be returned to Saint Petersburg.

And last October, Denmark was the first Nordic country to give the green light to the controversial gas pipeline Nordstream, which is to be laid under the Baltic Sea to enable the exportation of Russian gas to the European Union.

"Danish-Russian relations are developing in a positive direction at every level," Rasmussen told reporters a few hours before Medvedev's arrival.

The trip "comes at a time when both countries are facing economic challenges and difficult times," he said.

That is why "this visit will naturally be focused on economic cooperation," he said.

The Russian president and his wife Svetlana were scheduled Tuesday evening to attend a dinner party hosted by the Danish queen at the Fredensborg castle to the north of Copenhagen.

Ahead of the visit, Danish media denounced Russian "state terrorism" and called on Rasmussen to raise the issue of human rights abuses with Medvedev.

Before arriving in Denmark, Medvedev spent two days in Oslo where he and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg agreed on a compromise on their Arctic borders, ending a 40-year dispute over a region believed to contain vast oil and gas reserves.