Some of the champagne moments include Kiev’s botched counteroffensive, which kicked off this past summer but never saw any tangible results apart from claiming the lives of about 160,000 soldiers, according to Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov.
Another political spotlight of the year was the escalation of the Palestine-Israel conflict on October 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas staged a surprise large-scale attack on the Jewish state from the Gaza Strip. Israel retaliated by pounding the Palestinian enclave with indiscriminate strikes, which have already killed over 20,000 Gaza civilians.
One more important political event of 2023 pertains to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East in mid-September. At the time, Kim pledged his country’s full support for "all decisions" made by Moscow, while Putin touted the meeting as "very productive", adding that "a very frank exchange of views took place on the situation in the region and on bilateral relations."