Is it really the end or the beginning of the end?

Is it really the end or the beginning of the end?

Protests around the world at times cast a shadow over the pandemic.

Even during epidemic crises, citizens elected new government officials, which led to mass demonstrations in some countries, and from January 2020 to January 2021, the world was hit by several terrorist attacks and killings.

It took 366 days of this leap year that will be remembered by the coronavirus, but no matter how much the virus slowed down and overshadowed everything, some of the events found their place in history.

Did the new 2021 mark the end or at least the beginning of the end of what the previous year brought?

The murder of Suleimani

Already at the beginning of the year, primarily the world political public was shocked by the news of the assassination of Kasem Sulejmani, a high-ranking Iranian general.

Suleimani, who led Iranian military operations in Iraq and Syria, was killed on January 3 as local allies drove him from Baghdad airport.

A close associate and deputy head of the PMU, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, was also killed in the attack.

The fall of the Ukrainian Boeing and death of a basketball legend

Shortly afterwards, on January 8, a Ukrainian Boeing 737 carrying 176 people crashed after taking off from Tehran airport. Three days later, Iran announced that the country's army "inadvertently shot down" a Ukrainian passenger plane, stating that it was a human error.

Also, before anyone could have guessed what year awaited us, the world was hit by the news of the death of the legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant.

Forty-one-year-old Bryant was in a helicopter when he crashed near Calabasas, in the western part of Los Angeles. His daughter Giana - Gigi also died with Kobe.

Devastating earthquake hit Turkey, fires in Australia...

A devastating earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hit Turkey on January 24th. The east of Turkey was shaking, and more than 40 people were killed.

During January, frightening photos from Australia, which was affected by large fires, toured the world. These were the largest in recent history on that continent. They swallowed almost 30 million hectares of forest, while scientists estimate that as many as three billion animals were lost.

While an epidemic of coronavirus broke out in March, on March 22, Zagreb was hit by a devastating earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale. Unfortunately, a girl lost her life in the earthquake. Great material damage was done in the Croatian capital.

Murders of African Americans in the United States

On May 25, the news of the death of African-American George Floyd, who was strangled by police officer Derek Chauvin, went around the world.

Namely, the police in Minneapolis exceeded the force when apprehending Floyd, and Chauvin put his knee on his neck. "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" Floyd said at that moment, as he lay on the asphalt, the policeman's leg was on his neck. Floyd then died in police custody, which triggered mass anti-racist protests across the United States and the world. After that, another African-American, Rayshard Brooks (27), was killed in Atlanta on June 13. He was also killed by a police officer who was later fired.

Just to recall, 27-year-old Rayshard was reported because he slept in a car that blocked the passage of other road users. It was established that he was under the influence of alcohol, and during the arrest there was a push, so Brooks grabbed an electric shocker from one of the police officers. He was then shot.

It may have seemed that the tension was slowly calming down, but again... In September, a new police murder of a young African-American happened in America, when Deon Kay (18) was killed in Washington.

A police report states that 18-year-old Kay was identified as a person who fled when the police approached him, who were investigating the report of an armed young man seen in a neighborhood of southeastern Washington.

Serbia elected MPs

After the spring during which the world was in the lockdown, elections around the world followed. Going to the polls in many countries has been postponed to the summer months when the coronavirus epidemic has subsided.

First of all, on June 21, parliamentary and local elections were held in Serbia.

The electoral list "Aleksandar Vučić - For our children" won 1.953.998 votes, i.e. 60.65 percent of all voters who went to the polls, i.e. 188 parliamentary seats.

Seven more lists entered the Parliament.

On October 25, Serbia got a new government headed by Ana Brnabic.

After the elections, in the middle of the epidemic, there were protests in front of the Serbian Parliament. The protesters also tried a violent intrusion into the parliament building, but the police also prevented them.

Milanovic instead of Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, HDZ won a convincing victory, while in Belarus, Lukashenko won the elections for the sixth time

Croatia got a new president on January 6th after the candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, won the elections.

Croats went to the polls on July 5 for parliamentary elections. A convincing victory was won by the Croatian Democratic Union of Andrej Plenković, who is currently the Prime Minister of Croatia.

Although uncertainty was expected, one of the most convincing victories of the HDZ took place.

Presidential elections were also held in Belarus in August. The victory was taken by the previous president, Alexander Lukashenko, for whom this is the sixth term.

The elections were followed by protests by supporters of the opposition, who believe that the elections were stolen and that Lukashenko did not come to the position of president legally.

Lukashenko, meanwhile, has banned the protests, authorizing police forces to break them up by force. His opponent and leader of the opposition, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, claimed that she was the winner, and Lukashenko responded with repression - by arresting opposition leaders and demonstrators.

Almost all leading opposition politicians, including Tikhanovskaya, were forced to leave the country, and some, like Maria Kolesnikova, were arrested.

The European Union has said it will not recognize Lukashenko as president and has imposed new sanctions on Belarus.

Poisoning of Alexei Navalny

On August 20, the plane with which the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was flying from Tomsk to Moscow, urgently landed in Omsk, because he got sick. From that moment, speculations about Navalny's poisoning started, and he soon found himself in a hospital in Germany.

Navalny was allegedly poisoned by the Novichok nerve agent, and he was in the hospital for four weeks.

Western experts said they had determined that Navalny had been poisoned, but Putin strongly denied that Russian state authorities had anything to do with it.

At the end of September - War in the Caucasus

Lots of things happened, and then the war followed. Armenia and Azerbaijan have renewed the armed conflict over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been disputed for decades.

On September 27, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that the Azerbaijani armed forces had launched an offensive in the direction of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The war lasted until November 10, when peace was made through Russia.

One side accused the other of attacks and fomenting further conflicts, and the fact is that the cities were destroyed, while many people lost their lives.

The exact number of people killed during the conflict has not been announced yet.

In late October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that about 5.000 soldiers on both sides lost their lives, as well as several hundred civilians.

After the agreement in the capital of Azerbaijan, people celebrated in other places as well, and anger reigned in Armenia.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called the agreement incredibly painful for him and his people, and demonstrations broke out in Yerevan.

Protesters stormed parliament in a fit of rage, demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

The peace agreement was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. It means that Azerbaijan will keep the areas in Nagorno-Karabakh that it occupied during the conflict.

Armenia has agreed to withdraw from several other neighboring areas.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh is one of the longest in Europe and has lasted since the time when both countries were part of the Soviet Union.

The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities declared independence in 1991, but most countries do not recognize the decision.

Nagorno-Karabakh is mostly inhabited by Armenians, but Azerbaijan considers this area part of its state.

Europe in fear of terrorist attacks

During the fall, terrorist attacks followed.

First, on September 25, an attack took place near the former premises of the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo". At least two people were injured in the knife attack. Then, on October 16, a teacher was killed in Paris. The killer cut off his head, and as the media reported at the time, the murdered teacher showed the children caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class. A police source then stated that witnesses heard the attacker shouting "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great."

The act heightened tensions between Turkey and France, which withdrew their ambassadors from Paris and Ankara, respectively.

Two weeks later, on October 29, a new attack in France followed. Tunisian Brahim Oso (21) is suspected of cutting off a woman's head in front of the cathedral in Nice.

Terrorism in France - who is responsible? While France was finding ways to fight terrorism, Europe was shocked by a new tragedy. A terrorist attack took place in Vienna on November 2, when several people were killed. Kujtim Fejzulaj, an Albanian from Northern Macedonia, is suspected of this attack, and the terrorist organization "Islamic State" took responsibility for the attack.

Death of Irinej and Amfilohije

Unfortunately, we will also remember this year after the death of Serbian Patriarch Irinej and Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral Amfilohije. Amfilohije died on October 30 from the consequences of COVID-19 infection, while the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Irinej, passed away on November 20, also from the consequences of coronavirus-related disease.

Protests in Poland

Thousands of women and men took to the streets in Poland in October to oppose the new Abortion Act.

The controversial government law, which received the support of the Constitutional Court of Poland, almost completely prohibited abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or when the health of a pregnant woman was seriously impaired. The court ruling established that abortions are unconstitutional in almost all cases, even when the fetus has certain deformities.

Support for the Poles came from all over the world.

Trump was left without a new mandate, Biden at the head of the United States

The year was certainly marked by the presidential elections in the United States of America.

The vote, which caught the eye of the whole world, was held on November 3, after the country was already deeply in crisis caused by a pandemic and internal unrest. The United States is the most affected by coronavirus in the world and currently has close to 20.000.000 registered cases.

The fight between the current president Donald Trump and the opponent from the Democratic Party, Joseph Biden, and the tense counting of votes in the key countries that decide on the winner, resulted in even deeper divisions in the American society. The United States got a new president, Joseph Biden, who won 306 electoral votes, while Trump won 232. Biden will officially take office on January 20.

Trump first refused to admit defeat, talking about "election fraud" and "rigging". He also filed lawsuits, proving his claims.

The pandemic influenced the presidential elections to be historic - there were no large pre-election rallies, and the entire campaign was transferred to social networks, while many more people than usual voted by mail.

The campaign was marked, among other things, by the news that Donald Trump and his wife Melania were infected with the coronavirus. However, he returned to the election race very soon after his treatment.

Death of Maradona

After the news of the death of Kobe Bryant shocked everyone in early 2020, another sports legend went down in history. Diego Maradona passed away on November 25, at the age of 60, as a result of a heart attack. Maradona is considered one of the best, if not the best football player of all time.

Not even the end of the year could pass in peace.

The very end of the year was marked by earthquakes in Croatia. Strong earthquakes shook Petrinja and Glina on December 29, took seven lives and left people homeless.

Solidarity was shown by the countries of the world and the region, and the Government of Serbia, on the initiative of President Vučić, made a decision to send aid to Croatia in the amount of one million euros, for repairing the consequences of the earthquake.

At the beginning of this year, we want the list of attacks and disasters at the end of 2021 to be significantly smaller, and the one with beautiful events to be longer, which was missing during 2020.