General Staff Building in Belgrade (Photo: PrintScreen YouTube)
On March 24, both representatives of state institutions and the country’s protesting students will commemorate the day NATO commenced its bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. According to different estimates, about 2,500 civilians and 1,000 soldiers were killed in the 11 weeks of continuous air strikes.
In one official state ceremony, Foreign Minister Marko Djuric will lay a wreath at the Monument to the Children Killed in the NATO Bombing, while Belgrade City Assembly Speaker Nikola Nikodijevic will place a wreath at the Herald of Strazevica monument, both located on the territory of the capital.
For their part, representatives of the oppositional Freedom and Justice party have announced they will lay a wreath at the We Were Only Children memorial, in downtown Belgrade’s Tasmajdan Park, while the protesting university students plan to stage a six-hour blockade at the former Army of Serbia General Staff Building.
Largely destroyed during the NATO aggression, the former military headquarters were declared a cultural landmark in 2005 and held the status until it was revoked in November 2024, with plans to allow the current U.S. president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to turn the edifice into a hotel.
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