Queen Beatrix and Crown Prince Willem-Alexander met Vladimir and Liudmila Putin at the Amsterdam airport.
During the first day of the visit the President laid a wreath on the National Monument in Dam Square in memory of Dutch citizens who died in the Second World War, and visited the house in the city Zaandam where Peter the Great temporarily stayed in 1697.
A separate item on the agenda was a meeting with Dutch business representatives during which Vladimir Putin emphasized that the Netherlands are definitely one of the major investors in Russia: in the past five years the volume of Dutch capital investments in the Russian economy increased not by 20, 30 or 40 percent, but by 20 times.