In just a few months, U.S. officials have pivoted from publicly warning Beijing not to provide material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine to acknowledging there is a role for China to play in brokering peace talks.

On February 24, the day that China unveiled its 12-point peace proposal, Blinken voiced skepticism during remarks to the United Nations Security Council Ministerial Meeting on Ukraine.

“No member of this council should call for peace while supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine and on the U.N. Charter,” the top U.S. diplomat said one year after Russia invaded Ukraine.

By May 3, Blinken publicly acknowledged that it’s possible China would have a “very beneficial” role to play in peace talks.

Analysts and former American officials told VOA the shift in U.S. tone is partly a response to Washington’s European allies, who view Chinese President Xi Jinping as the only possible leader who can influence Russian President Vladimir Putin’s thinking about the war in Ukraine.

China has since announced it will send a peace envoy to Ukraine, although some remain skeptical that Beijing can be neutral.

China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, is expected to travel to Ukraine and other nations in a bid to bring a cease-fire and a diplomatic resolution to the war.

Li, a fluent Russian speaker, was Beijing’s former envoy to Russia from 2009 to 2019 and was among a few people awarded the Medal of Friendship by Putin.

When asked by VOA if the U.S. thinks China can be bias-free in mediating an end to Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, a State Department spokesperson said, “When it comes to diplomacy, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. The other key part of this is obviously Russia. The Kremlin has yet to demonstrate any meaningful interest in ending this war; quite the opposite.”

“No, China cannot be bias-free. China is clearly supportive of President Putin,” said Ambassador William Taylor, vice president for Europe and Russia at the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace. “So, it cannot present itself as a neutral mediator.”

Taylor was charge d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in 2019 and as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.

As U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is reported to be weighing whether to work with Beijing to seek a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, Taylor told VOA, “The key caution is to be sure that any conversation with the Chinese about the Russian war on Ukraine has the Ukrainians as participants.”

“The Chinese as a mediator are not terribly forceful,” said Dennis Wilder, an assistant professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University, who from 2009 to 2015 was senior editor of the U.S. President’s Daily Brief, a summary of intelligence from across the government.

“If people are expecting the Chinese to come up with the creative solution, they’ll be disappointed. That’s not the way China operates. If people are looking for China to offer its good offices, China is pretty good at that. But the Chinese very rarely come up with the solution,” Wilder told VOA.

Last Wednesday, when asked by The Washington Post about working with China to achieve a stable outcome in Ukraine and China’s offer to mediate an end to the war, Secretary of State Antony Blinken struck a warmer tone.

“It’s certainly possible that China would have a role to play in that effort, and that could be very beneficial,” he said.

Experts say those remarks reflect the European Union’s belief that there has been some progress in encouraging Xi to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and to support Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty. They hope China will do more going forward.

“While agreeing with the U.S. that it is necessary to warn Beijing against supplying lethal aid to Russia, at the same time they want to urge China to use its leverage over Moscow to bring an end to the war,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Others, including former Assistant Secretary for Europe Philip Reeker, who now heads the Global Europe Program at the Wilson Center, believes “working together to help end Putin’s disastrous adventure would give Washington and Beijing an opportunity for engagement that could help in their own strained bilateral relations.”

The debate on whether Washington could work with Beijing in achieving a negotiated settlement in Ukraine came as the White House said Washington and Beijing are discussing a potential trip to China by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Blinken also said he was hopeful to reschedule a visit to China this year.
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Fighters from Ukraine are expected to take part in the 2023 Invictus Games in Germany this September, even as Russia’s war on their country grinds on. Omelyan Oshchudlyak has the story. VOA footage by Yuriy Dankevych.
…

New developments:

Fears about the safety of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is growing after the Moscow-installed governor of the Ukrainian region where it is located ordered civilian evacuations.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prighozin said his forces will remain in the besieged Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. He indicated his soldiers will continue the assault on the city after the Russian military promised more arms and ammunition.
Russian nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin sent a defiant message to those who attempted to assassinate him. Prilepin is recovering from extensive injuries after a car bomb exploded killing his driver.

At least five people were injured in Kyiv early Monday when Russia launched a massive strike on the Ukraine capital.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the messaging app Telegram that three people were wounded in blasts in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi district and two in the Sviatoshyn district, both west of the capital’s center.

Klitschko also said drone wreckage had fallen on a two-story building in the Sviatoshyn region.

The city administration said debris fell on a parked car, causing the car to catch fire.

Russian missiles also set ablaze a food warehouse in the Black Sea city of Odesa and blasts were reported in several other Ukrainian regions, Reuters reported.

The large-scale attacks come as Moscow prepares for its Victory Day parade on Tuesday.

Moscow reportedly wants a complete capture of Bakhmut to coincide with the country’s upcoming Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group reversed its intention to withdraw from the besieged eastern Ukrainian city. Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his forces will remain there after Moscow promised to provide more arms to conscripts.

Also Sunday, fears about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in east Ukraine grew after Russian officials ordered the evacuation of civilians from 18 settlements around the nuclear power plant.

The plant is near the front line of battles between Russian and Ukrainian forces. Russia fired more than 30 shells at Nikopol, a Ukrainian-held town neighboring the plant, killing a 72-year-old woman and injuring three others Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine has also mounted attacks in the vicinity of the plant, according to The Associated Press.

The head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency said in a statement Saturday the situation near the plant “is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous.” 

“I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant,” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said.  “We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment.” 

Labor shortage

Russia is facing one its worst labor shortages since 1998. In an intelligence update Sunday, the British Defense Ministry wrote that the Russian Central Bank surveyed 14,000 employees and found that its labor force was at its lowest level since 1998.

The British Defense Ministry said the attrition of manpower due to the war in Ukraine as well as the mass exodus of Russians trying to avoid the draft are partially to blame for the labor shortage. The survey also showed that the Russian population has decreased by 2 million in the last three years due to the COVID pandemic and an aging population.

Russian car bombing

The prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, who barely escaped death from a car bomb attack Saturday, sent a defiant message to his attackers.

“To the demons I say: You will scare nobody. There is a God. We will win,” he wrote Sunday on the messaging app Telegram from the hospital in the Nizhny Novgorod region where he is recovering.

Russia’s state Investigative Committee said his Audi Q7 was blown up Saturday in a village, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow. The attacker fled the scene.

Prilepin said both his legs were broken by the explosion that killed his driver. Russia’s Foreign Ministry blamed Ukraine and the Western states backing it, particularly the United States, for the attack on the pro-Russia writer.

Ukraine’s security services neither confirmed nor denied involvement. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he believed Russian authorities had staged the attack.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ukrainian offensive 

The Washington Post reported Saturday that Ukrainian officials expressed concerns about outsized international expectations for a planned major offensive by Ukrainian troops and that falling short of those expectations could mean losing military aid. 

“Most people are … waiting for something huge,” the Post quoted Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov saying in an interview last week. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Post in an interview last week: “I believe that the more victories we have on the battlefield, frankly, the more people will believe in us, which means we will get more help.” 

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Days after two mass shootings left 17 people dead in Serbia, the European country’s Interior Ministry urged citizens Sunday to turn in all unregistered weapons or run the risk of a prison sentence.

Individuals who hand over illegally owned guns, grenades, ammunition and other weaponry between Monday and June 8 will not face any charges, the ministry said in a statement. Those who ignore the order will face prosecution and if convicted, potentially years behind bars, government officials have warned.

Weekend funerals were held for the victims of the shootings at a Belgrade school Wednesday and in a rural area south of the capital city Thursday night. The violence, which also wounded 21 people, has stunned and anguished the Balkan nation.

While Serbia is awash with weapons and tops the European list of registered arms per capita, it is no stranger to crisis situations following the wars of the 1990s that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The most recent previous mass shooting was in 2013, when a war veteran killed 13 people. The assailant in the country’s first mass school shooting was a 13-year-old boy who opened fire on his fellow students, killing seven girls, a boy and a school guard.

The next day, a 20-year-old man fired randomly in two villages in central Serbia, killing eight people. Both he and the boy in the primary school attack were apprehended.

While the country struggles to come to terms with what happened, authorities promised a gun crackdown and said they would boost security in schools and all over the state.

“We invite all citizens who possess illegal weapons to respond to this call, to go to the nearest police station and hand in weapons for which they do not have proper documents,” police official Jelena Lakicevic said.

The voluntary surrender applies to all firearms, explosive devices, weapon parts and ammunition that people keep illegally in their homes, Lakicevic said.

Serbia has refused to fully face its role in the wars of the 1990s, war criminals are largely regarded as heroes and minority groups routinely face harassment and sometimes physical violence.
…

After the gilded spectacle of King Charles III’s crowning in an ancient religious ceremony, coronation festivities took a more down-to-earth turn Sunday with thousands of picnics and street parties held across the U.K. in his honor.

The community get-togethers, part of a British tradition known as the Big Lunch, were intended to bring neighbors together to celebrate the newly crowned king even as support for the monarchy wanes. Critics complained about the coronation’s cost at a time of exorbitant living expenses amid double-digit inflation.

Thousands of luncheons were organized as part of the celebrations Sunday, along with a nighttime concert at Windsor Castle featuring Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and 1990’s boy band Take That. Charles encouraged residents to engage in volunteer activities Monday, which was a holiday.

The king and Queen Camilla were not expected at any of the luncheons but planned to attend the concert that will include a speech by his son, Prince William, heir to the throne.

The king’s siblings, Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Anne, the Princess Royal, and their spouses took on lunch duty for the royal family. Edward was in Cranleigh and his sister hit an event in Swindon. The king’s nieces, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, the daughters of Prince Andrew, were to join a lunch in Windsor.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hosted U.S. first lady Jill Biden and her granddaughter Finnegan Biden at the Big Lunch party held in front of his office. Other guests included Ukrainian refugees and community activists.

As in other neighborhoods with street parties, Downing Street was decked out in Union Jack bunting for the occasion.

The lower-key events followed regalia-laden pageantry that saw the king and queen crowned together in Westminster Abbey. They were presented with centuries-old swords, scepters and a jewel-encrusted golden orb symbolizing the monarch’s power in a medieval tradition celebrated with liturgy, song and hearty cheers of “God save the king.”

The couple then paraded through the streets in a gilded horse-drawn carriage led by the largest ceremonial military procession since the coronation of Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, 70 years ago. Some 4,000 troops marched in formation through the streets, their scarlet sleeves and white gloves swinging in unison to the sound of drums and bugles from marching bands, including one group of musicians on horseback.

Hundreds of thousands of spectators lined the route in the rain to see it in person. Nearly 19 million more watched on television in the U.K., according to ratings released by Barb, a research organization. That’s about 40% fewer viewers than had watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September.

Charles and Camilla said Sunday in a statement that they were “deeply touched” by the celebration and “profoundly grateful both to all those who helped to make it such a glorious occasion — and to the very many who turned out to show their support.”

Not everyone was there to celebrate, though, and criticism continued Sunday over arrests of more than 50 protesters, including members of a republican group shouting “Not my king” and environmentalists aiming to end the use of fossil fuels.

Graham Smith, leader of Republic, a group advocating for abolishing the monarchy, said he was arrested as he planned peaceful protest and spent 16 hours in police custody.

“These arrests are a direct attack on our democracy and the fundamental rights of every person in the country,” Smith said. “Each and every police officer involved on the ground should hang their heads in shame.”

The Metropolitan Police acknowledged concerns over the arrests, but defended the force’s actions.

“The coronation is a once-in-a-generation event and that is a key consideration in our assessment,” Commander Karen Findlay said.

In addition to the lunch celebrations, hundreds of troops marched through the center of Glasgow on Sunday to celebrate the coronation.
…

New developments:

Ukrainian officials issued air raid alerts on Saturday evening for areas covering roughly two-thirds of the country, from Kyiv and regions to the west through the east as well as south to Kherson region and Russian-annexed Crimea.
Ukraine's air force intercepted and downed a hypersonic Russian missile with an American Patriot defense system.
Six Ukrainian demining workers were killed and two were injured as Russian shelling intensifies in Kherson Oblast.
A fired Russian general known as the "Butcher of Mariupol" has a new job. He's joining forces with the Wagner mercenary group.

Russia is facing one of its worst labor shortages in decades and the war in Ukraine in partially to blame, the British Defense Ministry said Sunday in an intelligence update about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine posted on Twitter.

The Russian Central Bank conducted the survey over the last three years and found that the Russian population has decreased by 2 million people more than expected.  This was due, the report said, to the war in Ukraine and the COVID pandemic.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed on Saturday that Ukraine and the West are responsible for a car bombing that injured a prominent nationalist Russian writer and killed his driver.

Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin, known for his pro-war views, suffered serious leg injuries after his car exploded Saturday in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency and law enforcement officials.

Prilepin was still conscious after his Audi Q7 car exploded near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow, and he was taken to the nearest hospital, according to Russian news agency RBC.

Prilepin was in stable condition under a medically induced coma after his operation, Russian state news agency TASS reported, and a suspect in the assassination attempt was arrested Saturday.

“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with Ukrainian authorities, but also their Western patrons, the United States in the first instance,” the Russian ministry statement stated, without providing evidence.

The statement added that Washington’s failure to denounce this and other attacks was “self-revealing” for the U.S. administration.

Officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. No comment was immediately available from Britain’s Foreign Office, the wire agency reported.

Ukraine’s security would neither confirm nor deny involvement in the car bombing that injured the Russian writer or other attacks.

“Officially, we cannot confirm or deny the SBU’s involvement in this or other explosions which occur with the occupiers or their henchmen,” Ukraine news agency Ukrinform quoted Ukraine security officials saying.

Prilepin was sanctioned in 2022 by Ukraine, the European Union, the U.K. and Canada for supporting the Russian invasion. He joined Russia’s National Guard to fight against Ukraine in January, according to several Russian media reports.

Hypersonic missile downed

Ukraine’s air force said Saturday it had intercepted and downed a Russian hypersonic missile over Kyiv using newly acquired American Patriot defense systems.

This is the first known time the country has been able to intercept one of Moscow’s most modern missiles, The Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said in a post on the messaging app Telegram that the Kinzhal-type ballistic missile had been intercepted in an overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital earlier in the week. It was the first time Ukraine is known to have used the Patriot defense system.

Flying at 10 times the speed of sound, the Kinzhal is one of the latest and most advanced Russian weapons, and it is difficult to intercept.

Using hypersonic speed and a powerful warhead, the Kinzhal is capable of demolishing robustly fortified targets such as underground bunkers and deep mountain tunnels.

In an interview on Ukraine TV, Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said intercepting the Kinzhal was “a slap in the face for Russia.”

The first delivery of Patriot missiles arrived in Ukraine in late April. Ukraine has not specified how many of the systems it has received from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, or where they have been deployed.

Meanwhile, Russia wants a victory in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 9, but the chief of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force that is fighting there, has threatened to retreat from the city by May 10 if he does not receive critically needed ammunition and other supplies from Moscow.

Wagner Group

In a video posted on his Telegram channel Friday, Yevgeny Prigozhin unleashed a tirade directed at Russia’s military officials, accusing them of negligence and incompetence. Pointing toward a field covered with dead soldiers, he screamed at the camera, “These are … someone’s fathers and someone’s sons” he said. “We have a 70% shortage of ammunition!”

“If you give [us] the normal amount of ammunition, there will be five times fewer [dead soldiers],” he said.

Fired Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol,” has joined the Wagner Group as a deputy commander, according to Russian social media channels.

In two videos posted by war correspondent Alexander Simonov on Telegram, Mizintsev — dressed in Wagner-branded combat gear — was shown visiting a training camp and touring Russian positions in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

The footage coincided with the release of Prigozhin’s videotaped tirade, in which the Wagner chief accused Moscow of depriving his forces of ammunition because of jealousy over their success, Reuters reported.

In other developments, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said Friday Moscow is sending reinforcements to Bakhmut. She said the Kremlin is pulling Wagner mercenary fighters from other parts of the front line to redeploy them there.

Prigozhin said Friday his mercenary army had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, or Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, for which Moscow is organizing a large parade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the parade preparations in a meeting Friday with his Security Council, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Putin will preside over the annual military parade at Red Square despite the Kremlin’s assertions that Ukraine tried to kill him in a drone attack Wednesday. Kyiv has denied any involvement in the incident.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

New developments:

Ukrainian officials issued air raid alerts on Saturday evening for areas covering roughly two-thirds of the country, from Kyiv and regions to the west through the east as well as south to Kherson region and Russian-annexed Crimea.
Ukraine's air force intercepted and downed a hypersonic Russian missile with an American Patriot defense system.
Six Ukrainian demining workers were killed and two were injured as Russian shelling intensifies in Kherson Oblast.
A fired Russian general known as the "Butcher of Mariupol" has a new job. He's joining forces with the Wagner mercenary group.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed on Saturday that Ukraine and the West are responsible for a car bombing that injured a prominent nationalist Russian writer and killed his driver.

Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin, known for his pro-war views, suffered serious leg injuries after his car exploded Saturday in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency and law enforcement officials.

Prilepin was still conscious after his Audi Q7 car exploded near the city of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers east of Moscow, and he was taken to the nearest hospital, according to Russian news agency RBC.

Prilepin was in stable condition under a medically induced coma after his operation, Russian state news agency TASS reported, and a suspect in the assassination attempt was arrested Saturday.

“Responsibility for this and other terrorist acts lies not only with Ukrainian authorities, but also their Western patrons, the United States in the first instance,” the Russian ministry statement stated, without providing evidence.

The statement added that Washington’s failure to denounce this and other attacks was “self-revealing” for the U.S. administration.

Officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment. No comment was immediately available from Britain’s Foreign Office, the wire agency reported.

Ukraine’s security would neither confirm nor deny involvement in the car bombing that injured the Russian writer or other attacks.

“Officially, we cannot confirm or deny the SBU’s involvement in this or other explosions which occur with the occupiers or their henchmen,” Ukraine news agency Ukrinform quoted Ukraine security officials saying.

Prilepin was sanctioned in 2022 by Ukraine, the European Union, the U.K. and Canada for supporting the Russian invasion. He joined Russia’s National Guard to fight against Ukraine in January, according to several Russian media reports.

Hypersonic missile downed

Ukraine’s air force said Saturday it had intercepted and downed a Russian hypersonic missile over Kyiv using newly acquired American Patriot defense systems.

This is the first known time the country has been able to intercept one of Moscow’s most modern missiles, The Associated Press reported.

Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said in a post on the messaging app Telegram that the Kinzhal-type ballistic missile had been intercepted in an overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital earlier in the week. It was the first time Ukraine is known to have used the Patriot defense system.

Flying at 10 times the speed of sound, the Kinzhal is one of the latest and most advanced Russian weapons, and it is difficult to intercept.

Using hypersonic speed and a powerful warhead, the Kinzhal is capable of demolishing robustly fortified targets such as underground bunkers and deep mountain tunnels.

In an interview on Ukraine TV, Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said intercepting the Kinzhal was “a slap in the face for Russia.”

The first delivery of Patriot missiles arrived in Ukraine in late April. Ukraine has not specified how many of the systems it has received from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, or where they have been deployed.

Meanwhile, Russia wants a victory in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 9, but the chief of the Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary force that is fighting there, has threatened to retreat from the city by May 10 if he does not receive critically needed ammunition and other supplies from Moscow.

Wagner Group

In a video posted on his Telegram channel Friday, Yevgeny Prigozhin unleashed a tirade directed at Russia’s military officials, accusing them of negligence and incompetence. Pointing toward a field covered with dead soldiers, he screamed at the camera, “These are … someone’s fathers and someone’s sons” he said. “We have a 70% shortage of ammunition!”

“If you give [us] the normal amount of ammunition, there will be five times fewer [dead soldiers],” he said.

Fired Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol,” has joined the Wagner Group as a deputy commander, according to Russian social media channels.

In two videos posted by war correspondent Alexander Simonov on Telegram, Mizintsev — dressed in Wagner-branded combat gear — was shown visiting a training camp and touring Russian positions in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.

The footage coincided with the release of Prigozhin’s videotaped tirade, in which the Wagner chief accused Moscow of depriving his forces of ammunition because of jealousy over their success, Reuters reported.

In other developments, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said Friday Moscow is sending reinforcements to Bakhmut. She said the Kremlin is pulling Wagner mercenary fighters from other parts of the front line to redeploy them there.

Prigozhin said Friday his mercenary army had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, or Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, for which Moscow is organizing a large parade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the parade preparations in a meeting Friday with his Security Council, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Putin will preside over the annual military parade at Red Square despite the Kremlin’s assertions that Ukraine tried to kill him in a drone attack Wednesday. Kyiv has denied any involvement in the incident.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

Heart-wrenching cries echoed as funerals were held in Serbia Saturday for some of the victims of two mass shootings that happened just a day apart this week, leaving 17 people dead and 21 wounded, many of them children.

The shootings Wednesday in a school in Belgrade and Thursday in a rural area south of the capital city have left the nation stunned with grief and disbelief.

Though Serbia is awash with weapons and no stranger to crisis situations following the wars of the 1990s, a school shooting like the one Wednesday has never happened before. The most recent previous mass shooting was in 2013 when a war veteran killed 13 people.

Police said Wednesday’s shooter was a 13-year-old boy who reportedly opened fire on his fellow students, killing seven girls, a boy and a school guard. A day later, said police, a 20-year-old man allegedly opened fire randomly in two villages in central Serbia, killing eight people.

Classmates and hundreds of other people cried inconsolably as one of the girls killed in the school shooting was laid to rest in Belgrade in a small white coffin that was covered with heaps of flowers. Overwhelmed by grief, the girl’s mother could barely stand. One girl collapsed during the service amid screams and sobbing.

While the country struggled to come to terms with what happened, authorities promised a gun crackdown and said they would boost security in schools. Thousands lit candles and left flowers near the shooting site in Belgrade, in an outpouring of sadness and solidarity.

“My soul aches for them,” said Vesna Kostic, who came to pay her respects outside the school Saturday. “I keep looking for a cause, a reason why this has happened to him (the shooter), why this has happened to us.”

Serbian media reported that four of the eight children killed in the school shooting, as well as the Vladislav Ribnikar school guard, were buried at cemeteries in Belgrade on Saturday, the second day of a three-day mourning period for the victims.

‘How could this happen?’

Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the south, a mass funeral was held in the small village of Malo Orasje for five young men who were gunned down in the shooting rampage Thursday.

Sobbing mourners lined up to light candles while waiting for the coffins to be placed on five benches outside the village church for a service.

“Five graves! He (the killer) shut down five families,” one villager told N1 television. “How could this happen?”

Serbian police have said that the suspected shooter stopped a taxi after his rampage and made the driver take him to a village farther south, where he was arrested Friday. Officers later said they found weapons and ammunition in two houses he was using there.

The suspect, identified as Uros Blazic, told prosecutors during questioning Saturday in the central town of Smederevo that he shot people he didn’t personally know because he wanted to sow fear among residents, RTS state television reported. He faces charges of first-degree murder and unauthorized possession of guns and ammunition.

Motives still unknown

The motive for both shootings remained unclear. The 13-year-old boy, who is too young to be criminally charged, has been placed in a mental clinic. His father was arrested for allegedly teaching his son to use guns and not securing his weapons well enough.

The suspected village shooter wore a pro-Nazi T-shirt, authorities said, and complained of “disparagement,” though it was unclear what he meant. Serbia’s populist President Aleksandar Vucic promised the “monsters” would “never see the light of day again.”

Those wounded in the two shootings have been hospitalized and most have undergone complicated surgical procedures. A girl and a boy from the school shooting remain in serious condition; the village victims are stable but under constant observation.

The school shooting left six children and a teacher wounded, while 14 people were wounded in the villages of Malo Orasje and Dubona. The dead in Dubona included a young, off-duty policeman and his sister.

Authorities released a photo showing the suspected shooter upon arrest — a young man in a police car in a blue T-shirt with the slogan “Generation 88” on it. The double eights are often used as shorthand for “Heil Hitler” since H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.

Apart from the gun crackdown, officials have announced stepped-up monitoring of social networks and the media. Already by Saturday, several people had been questioned for posting threats or videos supporting the killers on social networks, the Tanjug news agency reported.

Serbia’s education ministry outlined a crisis plan for the students of Vladislav Ribnikar school to gradually return to classes next Wednesday. A team of experts, backed by the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, will offer support and oversee the process, a ministry statement said.
…

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. 
…

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.
…

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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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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