Watch the live stream: Trump participates in a Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery

YPRES, Belgium (AP) — Red poppies were dropped on soldiers, politicians and onlookers from around the world who gathered in western Belgium on Tuesday to commemorate the end of World War I.

Trump is scheduled to appear at 11 a.m. ET. Watch in the player above.

They laid wreaths at a newly renovated memorial to the victims of Ypres, the Belgian city that has earned the somber honor of being synonymous with the brutality of the conflict.

Tuesday is known as Armistice Day – or Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Day in Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – to mark the end of World War I.

Soldiers from New Zealand to Canada marched through the city toward the Menin Gate, a huge stone memorial inscribed with the names of tens of thousands of soldiers who were killed but left without graves.

Bagpipes and trumpets blared along with an electric guitar that played Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” in Flemish and English. A choir sang John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

In Britain, many people paused for two minutes of silence at 11 a.m., marking the moment of the end of the war in 1918, at 11 o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron attended the traditional ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe and lit the eternal flame at the memorial inscribed with the phrase: “Here lies a French soldier who died for the nation.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the nation’s minute of silence was a “silent echo of the silence that fell over Europe when arms stopped in 1918.”

From 1914 to 1918, the armies of France, the British Empire, Russia, and the United States fought against a German-led coalition that included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. The war claimed the lives of nearly 10 million soldiers, and sometimes tens of thousands, in a single day.

Hundreds of thousands died in Ypres alone.

The blood-stained fields of Flanders saw the development of more modern methods of killing. Horses ran alongside tanks. Poison gas was introduced. Aerial observation provided precision to artillery that overwhelmed medieval fortifications.

In the wake of the “war to end all wars” and then World War II, a modern geopolitical order was formulated with the aim of avoiding future conflicts, giving birth to the United Nations and the European Union.

Decades later, across a once-ravaged Europe, countries once again began to rearm and invest in the defense industry in response to Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.

The 27-nation European Union is concerned about a series of airspace violations, some close to its borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Western officials accused Russia and its agents of orchestrating dozens of sabotage incidents.

Beyond Europe, wars in places as far away as Gaza and Sudan have had an impact far beyond their borders. Tensions in Asia prompted Japan and other countries to increase military spending. Across the world, rising political movements are challenging the democratic system, with authoritarianism on the rise.

Associated Press writers Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Jill Lawless in London, and Sylvie Corbett in Paris contributed to this report.