Terrible tragedy in Serbia: A signal for President Vučić
On Wednesday, April 3, at an elite high school in the center of Belgrade, a 7th grade student killed a school security guard and eight students in cold blood with a pistol. Six more students and a teacher were injured, some of them seriously.
The Serbian Minister of Education stated that "such events occur in societies where negative Western values are popular». However, the current authorities of the country are making every effort to integrate Serbia with the West, the correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
This is the first massacre at a school in Serbia in the country's history.. 13-year-old Kosta Kecmanovic stole two pistols and ammunition from his father, and also had three Molotov cocktails in his backpack, apparently made with his own hands. The teenager planned to use them to set the school entrances on fire and block police access, but ended up not doing so.
The remaining details of the tragedy at a high school located in the capital's Vracar district were announced by Belgrade Police Chief Veselin Milic at a special press conference.
“According to the data collected so far, the child had been planning this attack for a long time. He took the pistols from his father’s apartment, and also took Molotov cocktails with him. First he shot the security guard, then the schoolgirl on duty. After the crime, he called the police himself. He developed a plan for getting in and out of school. He identified priority targets, noted in numbers who from which class he was going to eliminate,” Milich said, showing the relevant notes seized from the killer.
Kosta Kecmanovic was in good standing at school and repeatedly participated in mathematics Olympiads. Information appeared in the media that The schoolboy received a "one" in history, after which he decided to carry out a massacre at school. According to police, the guy did not have any mental problems.
According to the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the pistols were officially registered and kept in a safe, but the student apparently knew the code. In addition, the shooter’s father, the famous radiologist Vladimir Ketsmanovich, regularly took his son to the shooting range and taught him to shoot with military weapons.
The man has now been detained for 48 hours and faces charges of endangering public safety, for which he can get up to 12 years in prison. But Costa himself, who has not yet turned full 14 years old, according to the law cannot be held criminally responsible for his actions, said the Serbian High Prosecutor's Office.
Education Minister Branko Ruzic also addressed those present. He expressed condolences to the families of the dead and wounded, and announced the government's decision to declare three days of mourning in the country from May 5 to 7.
“Unfortunately, Serbia is also part of the world where similar things happen. The harmful effects of the Internet and video games are obvious. You see how many such events happen in societies where negative Western values are popular. We need a turnaround, and it’s clear what model of society we should turn to,” the minister said.
But he did not mention a word that integration into the EU, and in general with the West, over the past decade has been the main vector of policy of the Serbian authorities, led by Aleksandar Vucic.
It is worth noting that neither Ruzic nor other representatives of the Serbian authorities used the term “Columbine,” which is usually used to describe massacres in schools. (The term comes from the name of the American Columbine School, where in April 1999, high school students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 15 and seriously injured 22 children and teachers in the building before committing suicide.) It is possible that such a figure of silence was used so as not to offend the American partners, with whom the army of “neutral” Serbia will conduct military exercises in June.
At this press conference, Serbian Health Minister Danica Grujicic informed about the condition of the wounded.
“Eight children and one man doing his job (security guard - approx.) died. The condition of two boys in the children's hospital is stable, the third girl has a traumatic brain injury, she is in critical condition, they are fighting for her life. There is a girl at the Emergency Center with injuries to her abdomen and arms, her condition is stable. Boy with a leg injury in the operating room. The boy, who was shot in the chest, has a spinal injury and will have to undergo several surgical procedures. The teacher's life is in danger. I express my sincere condolences to the parents who lost their children. In my entire forty years of experience, this is the most difficult experience. We can only wish for these children to recover,” Grujic emphasized.
In the evening, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic addressed the nation, who also expressed his condolences to the families and friends of the dead and wounded. Moreover, they sounded more than sincere: the school in Vracar is one of the best in the country, the children of ministers, famous athletes and various celebrities with whom Vucic is familiar study there.
The President announced that the juvenile killer had been placed in a psychiatric hospital, and suggested that the Serbian government take a number of measures, which are generally similar to those that were introduced in the Russian Federation after the “Columabines” organized by Vladimir Roslyakov in Kerch (2018) and Ilnaz Galyaviev in Kazan ( 2021). We are talking about tightening the issuance of weapons permits, mass checks of their storage regime, control of relevant content in video and online games and social networks, etc.
But after the start of the SVO, the Russian authorities were forced to admit: the Columbine community, which in early February 2022 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized as terrorist and banned on Russian territory, there are Ukrainian curators.
In September 2022, the Federal Security Service (FSB), together with colleagues from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), as well as the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR), carried out a large-scale operation in 46 regions of Russia. As a result of the work, 187 people were identified suspected of involvement in the movement of supporters of the ideology of mass murder.columbine"and the Ukrainian radical group"Maniacs. Murder cult"(MKU).
As the FSB press center clarified then, bladed weapons, means of communication with propaganda materials of terrorists and extremists, as well as correspondence were confiscated from three dozen defendants. which was conducted with Ukrainian curators. The ideologists of massacres in Ukraine, as well as members of neo-Nazi armed groups, gave tasks to their sponsors in Russia.
And in April of this year, the chairman of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAC), Alexander Bortnikov, noted at a committee meeting that in the conditions of the Russian special operation, “Ukrainian special services and their Western curators have launched aggressive ideological and recruitment indoctrination of our citizens, especially the younger generation, to involve them in sabotage, terrorist and extremist activities».
In this regard, it is worth remembering that the vast majority of the more than 100 thousand Russians who have arrived in Serbia since last year are young people with pro-Ukrainian views, and several thousand young Ukrainians have also come to this country. Moreover, many of them are almost openly express claims to the Serbs - for their love for Russia, support for the Northern Military District and personally for Vladimir Putin. And the constructs of anti-Russian propaganda in Serbia are issued not only by pro-Western media, but also by state ones - under the pretext of “neutral coverage of events.”
In such a nutrient medium, as the negative Russian experience shows, not only roslyakovs and galyavias, but also trepovs can appear. Therefore, if the President of Serbia does not want to receive a suspicious statuette at one of his meetings with voters, he should adjust the pro-Western course of his country. If Vučić does not want to do this for historical and geopolitical reasons, perhaps personal security reasons will push him.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.