The eight billion inhabitants of the Earth are welcoming 2023
For many, the New Year will is an opportunity to banish memories of covid, as this year, for the first time in two years, festivities are planned after health restrictions were lifted.
In Australia, Sydney is one of the first major cities in the world to welcome the new year for its first unrestricted New Year in two years. The lockdown at the end of 2020 and the outbreak of the variant strain Omicron at the end of 2021 had prompted Australian authorities to impose restrictions on festivities. Now the measures have been lifted, while the country has opened its borders.
So more than a million people flocked to Sydney Harbour to watch a show with tens of thousands of fireworks. City authorities estimate that half a billion people watched the spectacle via the internet or television.
As early as noon, hundreds of people had occupied the best places to admire the spectacle.
“2022 was another year of significant change, as we continued to work to recover from the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, but today we are leaving that time behind us and looking forward with hope to 2023,” said Clover Moore, mayor of Sydney.
Last year, among others, Queen Elizabeth, Pele, Mikhail Gorbachev and Shinzo Abe passed away. After all, 2022 was marked by mass resignations of workers after the pandemic, the global recession and rising inflation, a slap in the face at the Academy Awards ceremony, the collapse of the cryptocurrency platform FTX and the arrest of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, but also the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk.
But more than anything else, 2022 will be associated with the return of war to Europe, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“A peaceful sky”
In more than 300 days of war, nearly 7,000 civilians have been killed and 10,000 wounded, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Sixteen million Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes. Those who live in the country are faced daily with blackouts, water and heating, as well as Russian bombings.
In the capital of Russia, Moscow, the traditional fireworks show was canceled, after the mayor of the city Sergei Sobyanin asked residents how they would like to celebrate the advent of the New Year. “With a peaceful sky above our heads”, this was the only wish of the Muscovites.
State broadcaster VGTRK has promised “a revelry atmosphere, despite the changes in the country and the world.” But this year the tv network’s festive show will take place without star host Maxim Galkin, who went into self-exile from Russia to denounce the war in Ukraine.
Further east, in China, the covid epidemic is on the rise after the lifting of very strict restrictive measures. Hospitals as well as incinerators are at their limits, however events are planned throughout the country on the occasion of the New Year.
