Web Desk:The world’s ushered in 2023, bidding farewell to 2022 with traditional celebrations of pomp and show.
In Pakistan, the celebrations started across the country, with people starting the year with fireworks, crackers, aerial firing and festivities.
Karachiites rushed to Sea View and several other places for fireworks and celebrations. People in Lahore, Islamabad, Gujranwala and other cities also took to the streets.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, while welcoming the nation to a new year, prayed for Pakistan’s political and economic stability in 2023. He recalled the disastrous floods in 2022 and promised to bring light to the lives of the flood victims.
The premier also promised the youth to bring new opportunities and paid homage to the martyrs of the country.
In Rio de Janeiro, throngs of people packed the city’s Copacabana Beach — up to two million were expected — for music and fireworks, without coronavirus safety measures of the past few years.
The festivities came only hours before Brazil inaugurates new president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Sunday, following his razor-thin win in October polls.
Across the Atlantic, Parisians — and a “normal” amount of tourists, comparable to 2018 or 2019, according to officials — took the opportunity to crowd together shoulder-to-shoulder for a fireworks show along the Champs-Elysees.
Police said about a million people showed up for the celebration, where children in pushchairs and partiers with champagne were equally visible.
“We’re here for the ambiance, to have a good time and to be together,” said 19-year-old student Ilyes Hachelef. “And it’s beautiful!”
Hours earlier, Sydney became one of the first major cities to ring in 2023, restaking its claim as the “New Year’s Eve capital of the world” after two years of lockdowns and coronavirus-muted festivities with a fireworks display over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
For some, 2022 was a year of Wordle, the Great Resignation, a new Taylor Swift album, an Oscar slap and billionaire meltdowns.
It also saw the deaths of Queen Elizabeth II, Brazilian football icon Pele, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jiang Zemin, and Shinzo Abe. Former pope Benedict XVI also died on New Year’s Eve.
The global population surpassed the historic milestone of eight billion people in November.
But 2022 is most likely to be remembered for armed conflict returning to Europe — a continent that was the crucible of two world wars.
“It was our year. Year of Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Saturday, reflecting on his country’s war effort throughout the year.
More than 300 days into Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine, about 7,000 civilians have been killed and 10,000 more injured, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
About 16 million Ukrainians have fled their homes.
For those who remain, an 11:00 pm to 5:00 am curfew will be in place amid periodic blackouts and Russian missile barrages.
The latest Russian strikes on Ukraine Saturday claimed at least one more life and wounded several others, said Ukrainian officials, while an explosion was heard in Kyiv just after the New Year.
“We do not know for sure what the new year 2023 will bring us,” Zelensky said, promising that Ukrainians would fight on and offering a wish for “victory” in the new year.
In Kyiv, filmmaker Yaroslav Mutenko, 23, was defiant after a shell hit the four-star Hotel Alfavito near his apartment, insisting the blast would not stop him from partying.
“Our enemies, the Russians, can destroy our calm but they cannot destroy our spirit,” he said.
There seemed to be a dulled appetite for grand celebrations in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Moscow cancelled its traditional fireworks show, as Putin said in a New Year’s address that “moral, historical rightness” is on Russia’s side as the country faces international condemnation over the war.
