April 11, 21:59 The French newspaper Le Monde published a story today under the headline "After the meeting between Putin and Schröder, the private Russian television channel NTV appears to be on the brink of death." As the newspaper notes, events on NTV were discussed during the meeting between the heads of Russia and Germany extremely unobtrusively - Chancellor Schröder did not even utter the word “NTV” itself.

April 11, 21:50 The head of the Moscow bureau of Time magazine, Paul Quinn-Judge, is confident that the clumsy putsch of the Kremlin attacking NTV puts the government in an obviously losing position. “This is a very good example that speaks to the desires and limited capabilities of President Vladimir Putin,” he said in an interview with American journalist Tony Caron. The president's main desire is to create a controlled society, says Paul Quinn-Judge.

Thursday, April 12, 2001. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation established the following official exchange rates: Currency Quantity Well Change US dollar 1 28.87 +0.08 Euro 1 25.68 -0.17 Italian lira 1000 13.26 -0.09 German mark 1 13.13 -0.09 French franc 10 39.14 -0.26 Pound sterling 1 41.43 -0.19 Japanese yen 100 23.27 +0.16 Thursday, April 12, 2001.