French President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Sunday that 2024 will be a year of French pride and hope, marked by the Paris Olympic Games and the re-opening of Notre-Dame Cathedral, in his traditional New Year’s Eve address from the Élysée Palace in the French capital.

From a devastating earthquake in Syria and Turkey to a march on Moscow and the war against Hamas in Gaza, 2023 was full of dramatic moments, from the heartfelt to the heartbreaking. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at 12 key events that defined the year in news. 

Thousands of protesters gathered Saturday in Belgrade in the biggest of a series of rallies against alleged electoral fraud.

More than a dozen people were killed by Ukrainian strikes on the Russian provincial capital of Belgorod, Russia’s emergencies ministry said Saturday, with the Russian defence ministry vowing the strike “will not go unpunished”. 

A celebrity-studded “Almost Naked” party in Moscow’s famed Mutabor nightclub has drawn outrage from Russia’s political establishment, which has become increasingly po-faced since the assault on Ukraine.

While wars are fought between armies or militant groups, conflicts have their keyboard warriors too. It is estimated that more than half of the world uses social media, and many people do not go to traditional media as a source of information at all. As social media use increases, unease has grown among EU decision-makers about the power of these platforms to potentially distort people’s view of the world. The EU has tried to regulate on disinformation through the Digital Services Act (DSA), but how successful has that effort been? Our panellists assess the impact of the DSA and raise other issues that are connected to disinformation, such as spyware and election interference.