Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of London on Saturday to witness the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III in a ceremony of pageantry and tradition watched by millions around the world on television and online.

Ninety heads of state, including kings and queens from around the world, attended the ceremony at Westminster Abbey. Some 203 countries were represented in the congregation, according to Buckingham Palace.

Charles, now 74 years old, became heir to the British throne in 1952 at the age of just three, when his mother Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne and was the longest-serving British heir-apparent. Charles officially became king upon her death on September 8 last year.

Charles’ coronation marks a new chapter for an ancient institution.

Historic procession

King Charles III and Queen Consort Camilla were taken by horse-drawn carriage from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey on Saturday morning.

Despite occasionally heavy rain, hundreds of thousands of people lined the route of the procession along The Mall and through Whitehall, past the Houses of Parliament, just as they had done eight months ago for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

A small number of protesters briefly drowned out the cheers. Police made several arrests, including members of the anti-monarchy group Republic, and the environmental protest group Just Stop Oil. There was no disruption to the procession.

Inside Westminster Abbey, the congregation of 2,200 people included members of the royal family, foreign kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, alongside members of the public invited by the king for their charity work. It was a fraction of the 8,000-strong congregation that witnessed Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, reflecting Charles’ desire for what the palace terms a “slimmed-down” monarchy.

Prince Harry, Charles’ youngest son, attended the ceremony alone amid continued strained relations following allegations of racism against his wife Meghan Markle and their son, Prince Archie, which the royal family denies.

Vivid pageantry

However, this was a day not for family drama — but for uniquely British pomp and pageantry deeply imbued with Christian faith. Some of the coronation rituals remain unchanged for more than 1,000 years. The first British monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey was William the Conqueror in 1066.

Placing his hand on the Bible, Charles proclaimed his allegiance to God: “In His name, and after His example, I come not to be served, but to serve,” he said.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, led the service. He asked of King Charles: “The coronation oath has stood for centuries and is enshrined in law. Are you willing to take the oath?”

“I am willing,” the king replied.

Multi-faith assembly

For the first time, female bishops took part in the service, alongside leaders of other faiths.

In a touching moment, Charles’ son Prince William pledged his allegiance to the king, with the words: “I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you and faith and truth I will bear unto you as your liege man of life and limb. So help me God.” He then kissed his father on the cheek.

Archbishop Welby then invited all those watching the service, within the abbey and on television, to pledge their allegiance to the king.

Crowning moment

As the crown was placed upon Charles’ head, trumpets sounded throughout the abbey. Across Britain, gun salutes marked the moment — a profound moment in the history of the nation.

The archbishop then placed a crown on the head of Charles’ wife, Queen Consort Camilla.

For those watching on giant screens in the streets and parks of central London, it was an experience to cherish.

“A moment once in the life, you know. It’s magical, it’s such an incredible event,” said Aurelien, a visitor from France, who did not give his surname.

Peggy Jane Lavery, a retired teacher from the United States, recalled the last coronation in 1953.

“I’m excited that I can be a part of a coronation. When I was a young girl, I was able to watch Queen Elizabeth [II] on television in Hartford, Connecticut, at a friend’s house because we had no TV. So, I’m thrilled to be here to see the coronation in person,” she told Reuters.

Buckingham Palace

At the end of the two-hour service, King Charles and Queen Camilla returned to Buckingham Palace in the gold state coach, which was built in 1762 and has been used in every coronation since 1831.

A huge entourage of military personnel followed, escorting another horse-drawn coach carrying William and Catherine, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and their three children.

Above a sea of British flags, the royal family gathered on the balcony of the palace to greet an adoring crowd. A flypast including helicopters from the Royal Air Force and the Red Arrows.

Future challenges

The new king and queen face undoubted challenges as they try to build on the deep legacy of Elizabeth II. They must try to keep the monarchy relevant to modern British society with an increasingly skeptical younger generation.

Charles has spoken of the need to investigate the monarchy’s role in Britain’s often brutal colonial past, and its link to the transatlantic slave trade. He must try to modernize an institution that is being strained by very public family feuds.

The king has voiced determination to take on those challenges: to lead an evolving monarchy that remains steeped in colorful tradition.
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Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of London on Saturday to witness the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III in a ceremony filled with tradition and colorful pageantry and watched by millions around the world online and on television. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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The car of a prominent pro-Kremlin novelist exploded Saturday in Russia, injuring him and killing his driver, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency and law enforcement officials.

The incident involving the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a well-known nationalist writer and an ardent supporter of what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, took place in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow.

It is the third explosion involving prominent pro-Kremlin figures since the start of the war in Ukraine.

In August 2022, a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of an influential Russian political theorist often referred to as “Putin’s brain.” The authorities alleged that Ukraine was behind the blast.

Last month, an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg killed a popular military blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky. Officials once again blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies.

The regional governor of Niznhy Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, said Prilepin suffered minor bone fractures and was receiving medical help.

Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that Prilepin was traveling back to Moscow Saturday from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and stopped in the Nizhny Novogorod region for a meal.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Irina Volk said a suspect had been detained. Russian news reports identified him as a native of Ukraine who earlier had been convicted of robbery.

Prilepin became a supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2014, after Putin illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula. He was involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine on the side of Russian-backed separatists. Last year, he was sanctioned by the European Union for his support of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In 2020, he founded a political party, For the Truth, which Russian media reported was backed by the Kremlin. A year later, Prilepin’s party merged with the nationalist A Just Russia party that has seats in the parliament.

A co-chair of the newly formed party, Prilepin won a seat in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, in the 2021 election, but gave it up.

Party leader Sergei Mironov called the incident Saturday “a terrorist act” and blamed Ukraine. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova echoed Mironov’s sentiment in a post on the messaging app Telegram, adding that responsibility also lay with the U.S. and NATO.

“Washington and NATO have nursed yet another international terrorist cell — the Kyiv regime,” Zakharova wrote. “Direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain. We’re praying for Zakhar.”

The deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, former President Dmitry Medvedev put the blame on “Nazi extremists” in a telegram he sent to Prilepin.

Ukrainian officials haven’t commented directly on the allegations. However, Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, in a tweet Saturday, appeared to point the finger at the Kremlin, saying that “to prolong the agony of Putin’s clan and maintain the illusionary ‘total control,’ the Russian repression machine picks up the pace and catches up with everyone,” including supporters of the Ukraine war.
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Iran said Saturday that it had executed a Swedish-Iranian dissident.

Habib Farajollah Chaab was convicted of the charge of “being corrupt on Earth” for his activities with Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, an Arab separatist group in Iran.

State television said the group launched an attack on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25.

Chaab was detained in Turkey in 2020 by Iranian security forces. The details of his arrest in Turkey by Iranian forces were not immediately clear.

Sweden had expressed concerns about Chaab’s Iranian arrest and conviction.

However, relations between Iran and Sweden were already tense, because Sweden handed down a life prison sentence to a former Iranian official for his part in the mass executions of political prisoners in Iran in 1988.

Some information for this report was provided by Reuters and Agence France-Presse. 
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King Charles III’s coronation is a chance to unite people with the history and pageantry of the monarchy, but those traditions are also full of potential controversies as he tries to show that the monarchy still has a role to play in modern Britain.

The new king has already recognized these challenges by adjusting the coronation festivities to the realities of today.

This coronation will be shorter and more inclusive than his mother’s in 1953. Faith leaders from outside the Church of England will take an active role in the ceremony for the first time. And people from all four nations of the United Kingdom, as well as the Commonwealth, will take part.

Here are five artifacts that will play a central role in Saturday’s events.

The Coronation Chair and Stone of Scone

King Charles III will sit atop more than 1,500 years of Irish, Scottish and English history when he is crowned Saturday at Westminster Abbey.

The crown will be placed on Charles’ head as he sits in the Coronation Chair suspended over the Stone of Scone (pronounced “scoon”) — the sacred slab of sandstone on which Scottish kings were crowned. The chair has been part of every coronation since 1308.

The 2.05-meter-tall chair is made of oak and was originally covered in gold leaf and colored glass. The gold has long since worn away and the chair is now pocked with graffiti, including one message that reads “P. Abbott slept in this chair 5-6 July 1800.”

Edward I had the chair built specifically to enclose the Stone of Scone, known by Scots as the Stone of Destiny, after he forcibly took the artifact from Scotland and moved it to the abbey in the late 13th century. The stone’s history goes back much further, however. Fergus Mor MacEirc, the founder of Scotland’s royal line, reputedly brought the stone with him when he moved his seat from Ireland to Scotland around 498, Westminster Abbey said. Before that time, it was used as the coronation stone for Irish kings.

In 1996, Prime Minister John Major returned the stone to Scotland, with the understanding that it would come back to England for use in future coronations. In recent days, the stone was temporarily removed from its current home at Edinburgh Castle in a ceremony overseen by Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, then transported to the abbey, where a special service was held to mark its return.

Coronation spoon

The gold-plated silver coronation spoon is the only piece of the coronation regalia that survived the English Civil War. After King Charles I was executed in 1649, the rest of the collection was either melted down or sold off as Parliament sought to abolish the monarchy forever.

The spoon is central to the most sacred part of the coronation ceremony, when the Archbishop of Canterbury will pour holy oil from an eagle-shaped ampulla, or flask, into the spoon and then rub it on the king’s hands, breast and head.

The ceremony has roots in the biblical story of the anointing of King Solomon and was originally designed to confirm that the sovereign was appointed directly by God. While the monarch is no longer considered divine, the ceremony confirms his status as supreme governor of the Church of England.

The 26.7-centimeter spoon is believed to have been made during the 12th century for either King Henry II or King Richard I and may have originally been used for mixing water and wine, according to the Royal Collection Trust.

The Cullinan Diamond

Two stones cut from the Cullinan Diamond — the largest rough diamond ever found — will feature prominently in the coronation, fueling controversy the royal family would rather avoid.

For many in South Africa, where the original stone was found in 1905, the gems are a symbol of colonial oppression under British rule and they should be returned.

Cullinan I, a huge drop-shaped stone weighing 530.2 carats, is mounted in the Sovereign’s Scepter with Cross. On Saturday, the scepter will be handed to Charles as a symbol of his temporal power.

Cullinan II, a cushion-shaped gem of 317.4 carats, is mounted on the front of the Imperial State Crown that Charles will wear as he leaves Westminster Abbey.

Charles sidestepped a similar controversy when Buckingham Palace announced that his wife, Camilla, wouldn’t wear the crown of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, on coronation day.

That crown contains the famous Koh-i-noor diamond that India, Pakistan and Iran all claim. The gem became part of the Crown Jewels after 11-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh was forced to surrender it after the conquest of the Punjab in 1849.

St. Edward’s Crown

The crowning moment of the coronation ceremony will occur, literally, when the Archbishop of Canterbury places St. Edward’s Crown on Charles’ head.

Because of its significance as the centerpiece of the coronation, this will be the only time during his reign that the monarch will wear the solid gold crown, which features a purple velvet cap, ermine band and criss-crossed arches topped by a cross.

After the ceremony, Charles will swap the 2.08-kilogram crown for the Imperial State Crown, which weighs about half as much, for the procession back to Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth II once said that even the lighter crown was tricky because it would fall off if she didn’t keep her head upright while reading the annual speech at the state opening of Parliament.

“There are some disadvantages to crowns, but otherwise they’re quite important things,” the late queen told Sky News in 2018, flashing a smile.

The current St. Edward’s Crown was made for the coronation of King Charles II in 1661 and has been used in every coronation since then. It is a replica of the original crown, which was created in the 11th century and melted down after the execution of Charles I in 1649.

The crown glitters with stones including tourmalines, white and yellow topazes, rubies, amethysts, sapphires, garnet, peridot, zircons, spinel and aquamarines.

Until the early 20th century, the crown was decorated with rented stones that were returned after the coronation, according to the Royal Collection Trust. It was permanently set with semi-precious stones ahead of the coronation of George V in 1911.

The Gold State Coach

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel back to Buckingham Palace from Westminster Abbey in the Gold State Coach, a 261-year-old relic that is renowned as much for its uncomfortable ride as its lavish decoration.

The coach was built in 1762 under the reign of King George III and it has been used in every coronation since 1831.

It is made of wood and plated with gold leaf, from the cherubs on the roof to the Greek sea gods over each wheel. About the only things that aren’t gilded are the side panels painted with Roman gods and goddesses and, of course, the interior, which is upholstered in satin and velvet.

But the coach is heavy — 4 tons — and old, meaning it only ever travels at walking speed.

And while it may look luxurious, the coach features a notoriously bumpy ride because it is slung from leather straps rather than modern metal springs.

The late queen wasn’t a fan.

“Horrible! It’s not meant for traveling in at all,” she said in 2018 in an interview with Sky News. “Not very comfortable.”

That’s one reason Charles and Camilla will ride to the coronation in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach, which is equipped with hydraulic shock absorbers, as well as heat and air conditioning. 
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Saturday is coronation day for Britain’s King Charles III and his second wife, Queen Consort Camilla. It is the first British coronation spectacular in 70 years. Queen Elizabeth II was the last British monarch to be crowned. Charles, 74, became king the moment his mother died in September.
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Saturday is coronation day for Britain’s King Charles III and his second wife, Queen Consort Camilla. It is the first British coronation spectacular in 70 years. Queen Elizabeth II was the last British monarch to be crowned. Charles, 74, became king the moment his mother died in September.
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U.S. director Damien Chazelle, best known for the Oscar-winning La La Land, will lead the jury of the upcoming Venice Film Festival, organizers announced Friday.

The 80th edition of the prestigious festival will take place from Aug. 30-Sept. 9 on the swanky, beach-lined Lido island.

“For 10 days each year this city of the arts, of Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese, becomes a city of cinema, and I am humbled and delighted to be invited to lead this year’s jury,” said Chazelle, 38, whose most recent film is Babylon.

Chazelle’s musical about making it in Hollywood, La La Land, opened the Venice festival in 2016, and went on to win six Academy Awards, including for its director, the youngest ever to win the prize.

Heading the jury for Venice’s parallel competition, Orizzonti, will be Italy’s Jonas Carpignano, director of a trilogy (Mediterranea, A Ciambra, A Chiara) based in the Calabrian port city of Gioia Tauro.

Last year, the festival’s top Golden Lion prize went to U.S. director Laura Poitras for All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. The documentary traced the campaign by photographer and activist Nan Goldin to hold the rich Sackler family accountable for the U.S. opioid crisis.

U.S. actress Julianne Moore headed last year’s jury, with Spanish director Isabel Coixet at the helm of Orizzonti.
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The Polish ban on Ukrainian agricultural products last month sent a shock wave across Ukraine, which lost $143 million in a month, Deputy Minister of Economy Taras Kachka told an audience at the Brussels Economic Forum on Friday.

Shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s early April visit to Poland, Polish officials, under pressure from local producers, suspended the import of grain and other agricultural products from Ukraine. Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania followed suit because of concerns about a flood of Ukrainian grain that, before the war, would have been shipped farther afield through Black Sea ports.

The Ukrainian minister of agriculture, who is traveling for negotiations through neighboring states, told VOA that the decision of the Polish government was unexpected. Ukrainians were informed about it a day before, and the restriction hit almost all Ukrainian agricultural production.

“We learned about the decision on Friday night, and it was imposed on Saturday morning,” said Ukrainian Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Mykola Solskyi of Poland’s April 15 ban. The EU had earlier liberalized all imports from Ukraine to help the country maintain its economy in the face of the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian agricultural businesses were shocked, said Oleksyi Mushak, a former Ukrainian MP and co-founder of ReGenerative Agro, an agriculture company.

“It’s like a missile hit you, but in this situation, it was a Polish ban — unexpected,” Mushak told VOA. “This brings us long-term problems. Now no one will have confidence, and no one will work on the long-term, only short-term contracts, making it difficult for Ukraine to access the money.”

After lengthy negotiations with the European Union, Poland agreed to cancel the unilateral restrictions. The European Commission agreed to allocate 100 million euros ($110.1 million USD) as compensation to farmers adversely affected by the glut of Ukrainian grain.

According to the agreement, Ukrainian wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seed can be sold to any country in the EU except to the five countries that had complained that the cheaper Ukrainian agricultural product was making their domestic production unprofitable.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, welcomed the agreement as “a deal that preserves both Ukraine’s exports capacity, so it continues feeding the world and our farmers’ livelihoods.”

“We hope to continue to talk to our Polish partners. We hope that the transit routes will start working again and the relationship between Polish and Ukrainian businesses will continue, including the products that are not restricted,” Solskyi told VOA.

The European Commission has had to negotiate hard with the five so-called frontline states neighboring Ukraine to ensure grain can be exported from Ukraine. Brussels realized that new ways of exporting Ukrainian agricultural products must be found.

In the last 10 years, Ukraine has become an agricultural powerhouse. According to the European Commission, as reported by Deutsche Welle, Ukraine accounts for 10% of the world wheat market, 15% of the corn and 13% of the barley market. Ukraine is also a significant player in the sunflower oil market. The war on Ukrainian soil reduced the ability to produce and export. However, even in the current situation, Ukraine is creating market competition.

“We have been present in the European market for a long time. We have competed with different countries and local producers for 10 to 15 years,” said Solskyi. “The key is the war that created this situation. Ukrainian farmers and traders looked at the western borders because the sea routes were blocked, and the amount of product that went to the European direction rose. That is why solidarity lanes were created. So, it is good there is competition; healthy competition is a key for development.”

However, the latest crisis is a sign of possible future obstacles to Ukraine’s EU membership. Poland will assume the EU presidency in the first half of 2025. Ukrainian membership in the EU will be a priority for Poland, Polish President Andrzej Duda said this week. But experts and officials are pointing out that the agricultural talks, particularly, can become very difficult because of Ukraine’s huge agricultural potential.

“It is in the general interest of Poland that Ukraine will be a member of the EU. We have a common security issue,” said Mushak of ReGenerative Agro. “However, we have to separate security and economic issues. Unfortunately, now we mix these two things.”

But Solskyi offered a reassuring message.

“Even before this current situation, we understood — and Europeans understood, our partners understood, we all understood — that the negotiations could be the most difficult regarding agriculture,” the Ukrainian minister told VOA.

“But Ukraine is not unique. Most countries that joined the European Union had the most prolonged and difficult negotiations. However, I am confident there are solutions and ways that we can take that will work for Ukraine and be comfortable for EU countries.”
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Supporters of a Spanish journalist accused of spying for Moscow have condemned a Russian media outlet for publishing what it said were leaked allegations of espionage in the case against the reporter.

Pablo Gonzalez has been held in pre-trial custody in Poland since February last year when Russia invaded Ukraine, while authorities investigate allegations that he was spying for Moscow — accusations the journalist has denied.

Poland’s secret service says Gonzalez used his role as a journalist as a cover for espionage, but officials have not disclosed any supporting evidence.

Agentstvo, an independent Russian online media outlet, published a report Tuesday saying Gonzalez was a Russian military secret service agent who infiltrated dissident circles.

The website said it based its report on records from Gonzalez’s mobile phone and dissident contacts.

In response, the Free Pablo Gonzalez Association, which campaigns on behalf of the journalist, tweeted: “We are not going to go into these leaks [from the investigation] but we are surprised that this has happened when the lawyers have not had access to the telephone records of Pablo.

“In this way they have created accusations [against Gonzalez] without respecting the presumption of innocence, without proof of someone who has spent 14 months in prison and without respecting his rights as a European citizen.”

The association added: “If Pablo is guilty or not, the only ones who can decide that is the justice system. The only thing we would ask is a rapid and fair trial.”

Agentstvo said in its report that Gonzalez was an agent from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service.

Nemtsov’s daughter

According to the report, Gonzalez came to know Zhanna Nemtsova, the daughter of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian physicist and opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin who was assassinated in 2015.

The two met in Brussels in 2016, the report said, quoting a source from the Boris Nemtsov Foundation who is an acquaintance of Nemtsova.

Agentstvo reported that Gonzalez socialized with employees of the foundation.

“When Gonzalez was detained in Poland in February 2022, reports on the activities of Nemtsova and people from her circle were found on his digital media,” the website reported.

Gonzalez was allegedly interested in students of the Summer School of Journalism of the Nemtsov Foundation from Ukraine and the U.S.

Boris Nemtsov’s letters were allegedly found on the journalist’s digital media, which Agentstvo said could have come from Nemtsova’s laptop.

Zhanna Nemtsova declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement that she has signed with the Polish authorities.

Olga Shorina, co-founder of the foundation, told Agentstvo that Gonzalez had taken part in the organization’s events but did not have access to confidential information.

VOA has attempted to verify the Agentstvo report with the Polish judicial services, but they declined to comment. Lawyers for the Spanish journalist said Polish authorities have not released details of the case against him.

The journalist’s family has links to Russia because his father moved there as a child after the Spanish Civil War. But Gonzalez is not part of the Russian intelligence service, his Spanish lawyer Gonzalo Boye has said.

Ukraine, Syria coverage

Gonzalez has covered conflicts in Ukraine and Syria for various outlets, including the left-wing Spanish newspaper Public, and Gara, a Basque nationalist newspaper. He also provided some camera work for VOA in 2020 and 2021.

He was arrested February 28, 2022, when crossing from Poland to Ukraine, where he had been reporting on the start of the Russian invasion.

Ukrainian secret service officials had earlier detained him and accused him of spying for Russia, which he denied.

He returned to Spain for a few days before leaving for Poland.

International rights organizations and press freedom commentators have criticized how Poland, a European Union nation, handled the case and demanded that Gonzalez be afforded due process and civil rights.

He is taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, seeking to secure his release on the ground that the terms of his imprisonment contravene his constitutional rights.

Jim Fry, a spokesman for VOA, said: “Because of the nature of the allegations against Mr. Gonzalez, the reports he contributed to VOA remain offline and under review. We continue to monitor the situation but have nothing to add at this time.”
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged more than $100 million Friday for Brazil’s fund to protect the Amazon rainforest, at a meeting with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ahead of King Charles III’s coronation.

“Beyond football, there are so many interests we have in common … [including] combating climate change,” Sunak told Lula as they met at 10 Downing Street in London.

“I’m delighted to announce we will be investing in your Amazon Fund, and I pay tribute to your leadership on this issue,” Sunak added.

The British contribution to the fund will be £80 million ($102 million), aimed at stopping deforestation and saving the region’s rich biodiversity, said a Downing Street spokesperson.

The investment is the latest diplomatic win for Brazil as it seeks to get wealthy nations to help bankroll the fight to save the world’s biggest rainforest.

Launched in 2008 during Lula’s first presidency with a $1 billion commitment from Norway, the Amazon Fund was suspended under far-right climate-skeptic former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula, who beat Bolsonaro at the polls to return to power in January, revived the fund on his first day in office.

He has been lobbying fellow world leaders to contribute in the name of saving the Amazon, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.

U.S. President Joe Biden announced $500 million for the fund last month — though the financing will have to be approved in Congress, a potentially tough battle.

And Germany pledged 200 million euros to protect the rainforest in January, including 35 million euros for the Amazon Fund.

Veteran leftist Lula has been hammering home the message that “Brazil is back” as a partner in the fight against climate change, after average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased by more than 75% under Bolsonaro from the previous decade.

Lula is one of a string of world leaders and royals in town for Saturday’s coronation ceremony, Britain’s first in 70 years.
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New developments:

Russia “highly likely” unable to protect its vast rail system from sabotage uptick, according to British Defense Ministry.
Ukraine shoots down its own malfunctioning drone over Kyiv.
Kyiv, Odesa targeted by Russian missiles and drones.

The Wagner Group chief said Friday he is withdrawing his fighters from the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10 because they do not have enough ammunition.    

Yevgeny Prigozhin said that without ammunition his private military units are “doomed to a senseless death.”

Prigozhin has complained for some time that his mercenaries in Ukraine have not received enough support from Russia.

Meanwhile, video has emerged for the Black Sea Economic Cooperation assembly in Ankara of a Russian and a Ukrainian delegate scuffling, after the Ukrainian flag was grabbed from the Ukrainian delegate, to prevent the flag from being in the background while a Russian official was being interviewed.  

The British Defense Ministry attributed a “recent uptick” in Russian rail accidents in areas bordering Ukraine to “sabotage committed by unknown actors.”

In the report posted on Twitter on Friday, the ministry said the attacks have “almost certainly” resulted in “short-term localized disruption of Russia military rail movements.”

Russia’s Railway Troop Brigades can quickly restore the lines, the ministry said. However, Russia’s internal security forces will be subjected to increasing pressure and “will highly likely remain unable to fully protect Russia’s vast and vulnerable rail networks from attack.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine shot down one of its own drones that was malfunctioning over central Kyiv on Thursday evening.

Initial reports from government officials said the Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle was an enemy drone, but later the air force said that the vehicle was Ukrainian.

The air force said in a statement that the uncontrolled presence of the drone in the sky could have led to “undesirable consequences.”

There were no reports of any injuries when the drone was shot down.

Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he is convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin would eventually face an international war crimes trial for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a speech at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Zelenskyy said, “Only one Russian crime led to all of these crimes: this is the crime of aggression, the start of evil, the primary crime. There should be responsibility for this crime.”

The ICC in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin on a war crimes charge involving the alleged deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia. Zelenskyy said Putin “deserves to be sentenced for these criminal actions right here in the capital of the international law.”

“And I’m sure we will see that happen when we win. And we will win,” he said.

The ICC cannot prosecute the crime of war aggression itself. But Zelenskyy appealed for a full-fledged tribunal to prosecute that overarching crime.

“If we want true justice, we should not look for excuses and should not refer to the shortcomings of the current international law but make bold decisions that will correct … shortcomings that unfortunately exist in international law,” he said.

Zelenskyy was welcomed outside the ICC building by the court’s president, Poland’s Piotr Hofmański. The court staff crowded at windows to watch Zelenskyy’s arrival and raised a Ukrainian flag next to the court’s own flag outside the building.

The ICC said in a March 18 statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of [children] and that of unlawful transfer of [children] from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”

But the chances of Putin standing trial in The Hague are remote. The court does not have a police force to execute its warrants, and the Russian leader is unlikely to travel to any of the ICC’s 123 member states that are under an obligation to arrest him if they can. Neither the U.S. nor Russia recognizes the authority of the court.

Zelenskyy’s speech came a day after he denied that Ukrainian forces were responsible for what the Russian government alleged was an attempt to assassinate Putin in a drone attack on the Kremlin. Moscow promised retaliation for what it termed a “terrorist” act.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday accused the United States of being behind the alleged attack. He said Russia was “well aware that the decision on such actions and terrorist attacks is not made in Kyiv, but in Washington.”

“And then Kyiv does what it’s told to do,” Peskov said, without offering evidence for his claim.

In Washington, U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby rejected the Russian accusation, telling MSNBC, “I can assure you that there was no involvement by the United States. … We had nothing to do with this, so Peskov is just lying there, pure and simple.”

U.S. officials also have voiced skepticism about the attack itself, including whether it was possibly staged by Moscow. “I would take anything coming out of the Kremlin with a very large shaker of salt,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

On the battlefront, Ukraine’s military claimed three Russian drones that hit the southern city of Odesa early Thursday had “for Moscow” and “for the Kremlin” written on them, seemingly signaling the drone attacks were specifically retaliatory. Also, Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, was the target of an air attack for the third time in four days.

Ukraine’s Air Force said it intercepted 18 of the 24 Iranian-made drones launched by Russian forces in various regions. No casualties were reported.

Fuel depot fires

A product storage area at a refinery in southern Russia caught fire after a drone attack Thursday. However, the Russian Tass news agency said the fire at the Ilsky refinery, near the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in the Krasnodar region was put out after two hours and the facility was now working normally.

Wednesday, Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s southwestern Krasnodar region, said on the messaging app Telegram that a fuel depot in the village of Volna was targeted by a drone. He said there were no reports of casualties from the fire.

Volna is near the bridge spanning the Kerch Strait that separates mainland Russia from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia forcibly annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The bridge, which is a vital link for Russia’s military to transport supplies to its soldiers in Ukraine, was partially destroyed by a truck bomb last October that Moscow blamed on Kyiv.

Wednesday’s fuel depot fire comes after a suspected drone attack last Saturday on an oil depot in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol.

The British Defense ministry in its daily intelligence update posted on Twitter said the attacks on Russian fuel depots in occupied Ukraine and the Russia Ukraine border area “will likely force adjustments to Russia’s military refueling operations to mitigate targeting.”

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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When King Charles III is crowned on Saturday, soldiers carrying flags from the Bahamas, South Africa, Tuvalu and beyond will march alongside British troops in a spectacular military procession in honor of the monarch.

For some, the scene will affirm the ties that bind Britain and its former colonies. But for many others in the Commonwealth, a group of nations mostly made up of places once claimed by the British Empire, Charles’ coronation is seen with apathy at best.

In those countries, the first crowning of a British monarch in 70 years is an occasion to reflect on oppression and colonialism’s bloody past. The displays of pageantry in London will jar especially with growing calls in the Caribbean to sever all ties with the monarchy.

“Interest in British royalty has waned since more Jamaicans are waking to the reality that the survivors of colonialism and the holocaust of slavery are yet to receive reparatory justice,” the Rev. Sean Major-Campbell, an Anglican priest in the Jamaican capital, Kingston, said.

The coronation is “only relevant in so far as it kicks us in the face with the reality that our head of state is simply so by virtue of biology,” Major-Campbell added.

As British sovereign, Charles is also head of state of 14 other countries, though the role is largely ceremonial. These realms, which include Australia, Canada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, represent a minority of the Commonwealth nations: most of the 56 members are republics, even if some still sport the Union Jack on their flags.

Barbados was the most recent Commonwealth country to remove the British monarch as its head of state, replacing Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, with an elected president in 2021. The decision spurred similar republican movements in neighboring Jamaica, the Bahamas and Belize.

Last year, when Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness welcomed Prince William and his wife, Kate, during a royal tour of the Caribbean, he announced that his country intends to become fully independent. It made for an awkward photo with the royal couple, who were also confronted with protests calling for Britain to pay slavery reparations.

William, the heir to the throne, observed later on the same trip that the relationship between the monarchy and the Caribbean has evolved. The royal family will “support with pride and respect your decisions about your future,” he told a reception in the Bahamas.

Rosalea Hamilton, an advocate for changing Jamaica’s constitution to get rid of the royals, said she was organizing a coronation day forum to engage more Jamaicans in the process of political reform.

The timing of the event is meant to “signal to the head of state that the priority is to move away from his leadership, rather than focus on his coronation,” Hamilton said.

Two days ahead of Charles’ crowning, campaigners from 12 Commonwealth countries wrote to the monarch urging him to apologize for the legacies of British colonialism.

Among the signatories was Lidia Thorpe, an Australian senator, who said Thursday that Charles should “begin a process of repairing the damage of colonization, including returning the stolen wealth that has been taken from our people.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who will attend the coronation and join in an oath of allegiance to the king, favors ditching the monarchy, though he has ruled out holding a referendum during his current three-year term.

“I want to see an Australian as Australia’s head of state,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Buckingham Palace said last month that Charles supported research into the historical links between Britain’s monarchy and the transatlantic slave trade. The king takes the issue “profoundly seriously,” and academics will be given access to the royal collection and archives, the palace said.

In India, once the jewel of the British Empire, there’s scant media attention and very little interest in the coronation. Some people living in the country’s vast rural hinterlands may not have even heard of King Charles III.

“India has moved on,” and most Indians “have no emotional ties with the royal family,” Pavan K. Varma, a writer and former diplomat, said. Instead, the royals are seen more like amusing celebrities, he said.

And while the country still values its economic and cultural ties with the European country, Varma pointed out that India’s economy has overtaken the U.K.’s.

“Britain has shrunk globally into a medium-sized power,” he said. “This notion needs to be removed, that here is a former colony riveted to the television watching the coronation of Prince Charles. I don’t think this is happening in India.”

Since gaining independence in 1947, India has moved to shed the vestiges of British imperialism. The statue of King George V that used to stand near the India Gate monument in New Delhi was moved in the 1960s to Coronation Park. Once the scene of celebrations honoring Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and George V, the park is now a repository for representations of former monarchs and officials of the British Raj in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led a renewed push to reclaim India’s past and erase “symbols of slavery” from the country’s time under the British crown. His government has scrubbed away colonial-era street names, some laws and even flag symbols.

In Nairobi, Kenya, motorcycle taxi driver Grahmat Luvisia was similarly dismissive of the idea of following the coronation on TV.

“I will not be interested in watching the news or whatever is happening over there because we have been mistreated back then by those colonizers,” he said.

Herman Manyora, a political analyst and journalism professor at the University of Nairobi, said memories of Britain’s harsh response to the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s are still raw.

Many Kenyans will not watch the coronation “because of the torture during colonialism, because of the oppression, because of detentions, because of killings, because of the alienation of our land,” Manyora said.

Not everyone is as critical. In Uganda, political analyst Asuman Bisiika says British culture continues to have a strong influence on young people in the East African country, especially those who follow English soccer. There is also a lot of goodwill for Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September after 70 years on the throne.

In the South African city of Durban, expat British communities have planned a live screening of the coronation ceremony, complete with trumpeters to announce the moment the archbishop of Canterbury crowns Charles. On Sunday, there will be a special church service followed by a picnic or a “braai,” a traditional South African barbecue.

Experts say that despite its flaws, historical baggage and fraying edges, the Commonwealth still holds appeal, especially for poorer nations. Gabon and Togo, which are former French colonies with no colonial links to Britain, became the association’s newest members last year. Most observers believe countries like Jamaica that want an elected head of state are likely to retain their memberships.

Myers Jr. reported from Kingston, Jamaica. Pathi reported from New Delhi. AP writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa; Khaled Kazziha in Nairobi, Kenya; and Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, contributed to this report.

 
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Friday he is frustrated that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remains in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States. Albanese also said a historic free trade agreement with Britian will come into force within weeks.

Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in London Friday, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared “enough is enough” over the continued imprisonment of Julian Assange.  He said the issue could be resolved before U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Australia later this month for the 2023 Quad Leaders’ Summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Japanese leader Kishida Fumio. 

Speaking in London, where he is for the coronation of British King Charles III, Albanese said he is frustrated a diplomatic solution to Assange’s case had not been reached.  

The Australian-born journalist and publisher is wanted by United States authorities over military records and diplomatic cables leaked in 2010 and 2011, which the U.S. says broke the law and endangered lives.  

Assange is fighting extradition from Britain and is being held in a high security prison in London.  He co-founded WikiLeaks, a website that publishes sensitive and classified information provided by anonymous sources.

Assange is wanted by the United States on 18 counts, including an allegation of espionage.  His lawyers have said he faces up to 175 years in jail. However, U.S. authorities have said the sentence is more likely to be between four and six years.  

Assange’s wife, Stella, has previously insisted that her husband was innocent and had “committed no crime.”  

The U.S. Embassy in Canberra did not return a call asking for a comment on Albanese’ remarks 

Albanese also said Friday that an Australia-United Kingdom free trade agreement would come into force by the end of this month, after years of negotiations.

He said the agreement would benefit business and individuals. 

“What it will mean, put simply, is more access to the market here for our goods and services,” Albanese said. “So, for beef, for sheep products, for our seafood.  But it will also have changes to the labor market – increased periods in which Australians can work here and vice versa.”

A former British colony, Australia has strong cultural and historic ties with the United Kingdom.

Australia is an international trading nation and has a long list of free trade agreements dating back to January 1983 and an agreement with New Zealand. It also has accords with China, its biggest trading partner, and the United States, its most important military ally.

Australia, the United States and Britain have signed the AUKUS security pact that will eventually deliver nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian navy.  

However, in Beijing a foreign ministry spokesperson said the trilateral accord undermines peace and stability.  

 
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A shooter killed at least eight people and wounded 13 in a drive-by attack near a town close to Belgrade late Thursday, the second such mass killing in Serbia in two days, state television reported.

The attacker shot randomly at people near the town of Mladenovac, some 50 kilometers south of the capital, the RTS report said early Friday. Police were looking for a 21-year-old suspect who fled after the attack, the report said.

No other details were immediately available, and police had not issued any statements.

School shooting

On Wednesday in Belgrade, a 13-year-old boy allegedly used his father’s guns in a school shooting rampage that killed eight of his schoolmates and a school guard. The bloodshed sent shockwaves through the Balkan nation unused to such mass shootings.

Dozens of Serbian students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, paid silent homage Thursday to peers killed a day earlier.

The students filled the streets around the school in central Belgrade as they streamed in from all over the city. Earlier, thousands had lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the eight children and a school guard who were killed on Wednesday morning.

The Balkan nation is struggling to come to terms with the school shooting. Though awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings still have been extremely rare — and this is the first school shooting in Serbia’s modern history.

Authorities on Thursday moved to boost gun control, as police urged citizens to lock up their guns and keep them safe, away from children.

“The Ministry of Interior is appealing to all gun owners to store their guns with care, locked up in safes or closets so they are out of reach of others, particularly children,” police said in a statement that also announced tightened controls on gun owners in the future.

The shooting Wednesday morning in Vladislav Ribnikar primary school also left seven people hospitalized — six children and a teacher. One girl who was shot in the head remains in a life-threatening condition, and a boy is in serious condition with spinal injuries, doctors said on Thursday morning.

Serbians mourn, donate blood

To help people deal with the tragedy, authorities announced they were setting up a helpline. Hundreds answered a call to donate blood for the wounded victims. A three-day mourning period will begin Friday morning.

Serbian teachers’ unions announced protests and strikes to demand changes and warn about a crisis in the school system. Authorities shrugged off responsibility, with some officials blaming Western influence rather than a deep social crisis in the country.

The alleged shooter, whom the police identified as Kosta Kecmanovic, has not given any motive for his actions.

Authorities have said that Kecmanovic is too young to be charged and tried. He has been placed in a mental institution while his father has been detained on suspicion of endangering public security because his son allegedly got hold of the guns.

‘Too much violence’

Gun culture is widespread in Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans: The region is among the top in Europe in the number of guns per capita. Guns are often fired into the air at celebrations and the cult of the warrior is part of national identity. Still, the last mass shooting was in 2013 when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

Experts have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the number of weapons in a highly divided country like Serbia, where convicted war criminals are glorified and violence against minority groups often goes unpunished. They also note that decades of instability stemming from the conflicts of the 1990s as well as ongoing economic hardship could trigger such outbursts.

“We have had too much violence for too long,” psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin told N1 television. “Children copy models. We need to eliminate negative models … and create a different system of values.”
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The White House says the United States was not involved in Wednesday’s drone attack on the Kremlin, after Russia claimed, without evidence, that the U.S. ordered the strike and Ukraine carried it out. VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
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Israel’s defense minister said Thursday that Iran could have enough enriched uranium for five nuclear weapons and warned Tehran that proceeding to weapons-grade enrichment could “ignite the region.” 

His remarks echoed international concerns, which have mounted over the past months, about Tehran’s enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Experts have said that the Islamic Republic has enough fuel to build several atomic bombs if it chooses. 

“Make no mistake, Iran will not be satisfied by a single nuclear bomb,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday during a visit to Athens. 

Uranium enriched for use in nuclear power plants is normally below 20%, while 90% enrichment is weapons grade. 

“So far, Iran has gained material enriched to 20% and 60% for five nuclear weapons,” Gallant said. “Iranian progress, enrichment to 90%, would be a grave mistake on Iran’s part and could ignite the region.” 

Israel’s leadership argues that Iran can be stopped from developing nuclear weapons only by the threat of military action, while the United States publicly favors a return to multilateral diplomatic efforts. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency said in March that it would restart inspections and camera-monitoring at some Iranian nuclear facilities after it reported that particles of highly enriched uranium had been found at an underground nuclear site. 

In Athens, Gallant was hosted by Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos. The two promised to further enhance military cooperation. 

Greece last year launched an international pilot training center, assisted by Israel and Israeli defense contractor Elbit in a $1.65 billion deal. And last month, Israel agreed to provide Greece with Spike anti-tank missiles in an agreement worth $400 million.
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The European Central Bank announced on Thursday the seventh-straight increase in its three key interest rates since July. At 0.25%, it was the smallest increase to date.

Speaking to reporters in Frankfurt, Germany, ECB President Christine Lagarde said that while inflation has dropped from its high of more than 10% in October, at 7%, it remains too high.

The bank said previous rate increases — all of which were one-half to three-quarters of percentage point — are being transmitted forcefully throughout the bloc’s financial industry. It is unclear, however, how they might be affecting the real economy.

Rate hike follows US increase

The ECB, the central bank for the eurozone — the 20-nation group that uses the euro as currency — announced the rate hike the day after the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point and indicated it could be its last increase for a while.

Lagarde gave no such indication Thursday, saying, “This is a journey. We have not arrived yet.”

An ECB press statement said the bank’s “future decisions will ensure that the policy rates will be brought to levels sufficiently restrictive to achieve a timely return of inflation to our 2% medium-term target and will be kept at those levels for as long as necessary.”

Costs still high

Inflation in the eurozone began surging last year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine significantly drove up fuel prices. Those prices have since moderated, but overall consumer costs remain high.

The interest rate hikes are having an expected effect on borrowing, Reuters reported, as eurozone banking data showed recent declines in loan demand from households and companies.

There are fears the interest rate hikes are affecting the eurozone’s economic growth, which, The Associated Press reports, was only 0.1% during the first three months of 2023.

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Italian conductor Riccardo Muti plans to visit Syrian musicians living in the vast Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan on the sidelines of his annual Roads of Friendship concert series that aims to use music to build bridges and help those affected by war.

Muti will conduct Italian and Jordanian musicians in concerts set in ancient Roman amphitheaters in Jerash, Jordan, on July 9 and the Pompeii archaeological site on July 11, for the 27th Roads of Friendship concert series.

The concerts will pay homage to the “generosity of the Jordanian people” for taking in millions of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war in the neighboring country, the Ravenna festival announced Thursday.

While in Jordan, Muti plans to visit the Zaatari camp, a symbol of the long-running Syrian refugee situation and home to about 80,000 refugees nearly 11 years after it was set up near the Syrian border.

He and a delegation from the Ravenna Festival will meet with musicians among the Syrian diaspora, bringing with them musical instruments as gifts.

This year’s Roads of Friendship concert series will launch on July 7 in Ravenna, and feature the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra founded by Muti, the Cremona Ancient Choir as well as Jordanian musicians.

The series was launched in 1997 in Sarajevo, just two years after the Bosnian civil war ended.

 
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Scores of Serbian students, many wearing black and carrying flowers, paid silent homage on Thursday to peers killed a day earlier when a 13-year-old boy used his father’s guns in a school shooting rampage that sent shockwaves through the nation and triggered moves to boost gun control.

The students filled the streets around the school in central Belgrade as they streamed in from all over the city. Earlier, thousands had lined up to lay flowers, light candles and leave toys to commemorate the eight children and a school guard who were killed on Wednesday morning.

People cried and hugged outside the school as they stood in front of heaps of flowers, small teddy bears, soccer balls. A gray and pink toy elephant was placed by the school fence along with messages of grief, and a girl’s ballet shoes hung from the fence.

The Balkan nation is struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Though awash with weapons left over from the wars of the 1990s, mass shootings still have been extremely rare — and this is the first school shooting in Serbia’s modern history. 

The tragedy also sparked a debate about the general state of the nation following decades of crises and conflicts whose aftermath has created a state of permanent insecurity and instability, along with deep political divisions.

Authorities on Thursday moved to boost gun control, as police urged citizens to lock up their guns and keep them safe, away from children.

Police have said that the teen used his father’s guns to carry out the attack. He had planned it for a month, drew sketches of classrooms and made lists of the children he planned to kill, police said on Wednesday.

The boy, who had visited shooting ranges with his father and apparently had the code to his father’s safe, took two guns from the safe where they were stored together with the bullets, police said on Wednesday.

“The Ministry of Interior is appealing to all gun owners to store their guns with care, locked up in safes or closets so they are out of reach of others, particularly children,” police said in a statement that also announced tightened controls on gun owners in the future.

The shooting on Wednesday morning in Vladislav Ribnikar primary school also left seven people hospitalized — six children and a teacher. One girl who was shot in the head remains in a life-threatening condition, and a boy is in serious condition with spinal injuries, doctors said on Thursday morning.

To help people deal with the tragedy, authorities announced they were setting up a helpline. Hundreds answered a call to donate blood for the wounded victims. A three-day mourning period will begin Friday morning.

Serbian teachers’ unions announced protests and strikes to demand changes and warn about a crisis in the school system. Authorities shrugged off responsibility, with some officials blaming Western influence rather than a deep social crisis in the country.

The shooter, whom the police identified as Kosta Kecmanovic, has not given any motive for his actions.

Upon entering his school, Kecmanovic first killed the guard and three students in the hallway. He then went to the history classroom where he shot the teacher before turning his gun on the students.

Kecmanovic then unloaded the gun in the school yard and called the police himself, although they had already received an alert from a school official. When he called, Kecmanovic told duty officers he was a “psychopath who needs to calm down,” police said.

Those killed were seven girls, one boy and the school security guard. One of the girls was a French citizen, France’s foreign ministry said.

Authorities have said that Kecmanovic is too young to be charged and tried. He has been placed in a mental institution while his father has been detained on suspicion of endangering public security because his son got hold of the guns.

“I think we are all guilty. I think each one of us has some responsibility, that we allowed some things we should not allow [to happen],” said Zoran Sefik, a Belgrade resident, during Wednesday evening’s vigil near the school.

Jovan Lazovic, another Belgrade resident, said he was not surprised: “It was a matter of days when something like this could happen, having in mind what’s happening in the world and here,” he said.

Gun culture is widespread in Serbia and elsewhere in the Balkans: The region is among the top in Europe in the number of guns per capita. Guns are often fired into the air at celebrations and the cult of the warrior is part of the national identity. Still, the last mass shooting was in 2013 when a war veteran killed 13 people in a central Serbian village.

Experts have repeatedly warned of the danger posed by the number of weapons in a highly divided country like Serbia, where convicted war criminals are glorified and violence against minority groups often goes unpunished. They also note that decades of instability stemming from the conflicts of the 1990s as well as ongoing economic hardship could trigger such outbursts.

“We have had too much violence for too long,” psychologist Zarko Trebjesanin told N1 television. “Children copy models. We need to eliminate negative models … and create a different system of values.”

 
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