World

What Ukraine Has Lost

Published

2 years ago

June 5, 2024

Few countries since World War II have experienced this level of devastation. But it’s been impossible for anybody to see more than glimpses of it. It’s too vast. Every battle, every bombing, every missile strike, every house burned down, has left its mark across multiple front lines, back and forth over more than two years.

This is the first comprehensive picture of where the Ukraine war has been fought and the totality of the destruction. Using detailed analysis of years of satellite data, we developed a record of each town, each street, each building that has been blown apart.

The scale is hard to comprehend. More buildings have been destroyed in Ukraine than if every building in Manhattan were to be leveled four times over. Parts of Ukraine hundreds of miles apart look like Dresden or London after World War II, or Gaza after half a year of bombardment.

To produce these estimates, The New York Times worked with two leading remote sensing scientists, Corey Scher of the City University of New York Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University, to analyze data from radar satellites that can detect small changes in the built environment.

The remains of around 1,000 munitions gathered from Russian bombardment of the city of Kharkiv.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

More than 900 schools, hospitals, churches and other institutions have been damaged or destroyed, the analysis shows, even though these sites are explicitly protected under the Geneva Conventions.

Source: Damage data by Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek based on InSAR data from Copernicus Sentinel-1, building footprints by OpenStreetMap. Satellite images by Maxar Technologies via Google, June 2023

The New York Times

These estimates are conservative. They don’t include Crimea or parts of western Ukraine where accurate data was unavailable. The true scope of destruction is likely to be even greater — and it keeps growing. In mid-May, the Russians bombed some towns in northeastern Ukraine so ferociously that one resident said they were erasing streets.

Ukrainian forces have caused major damage, too, by bombing frontline Russian positions and attacking Russian-held territory like Crimea and Donetsk City. While it is not always possible to determine which side is responsible, the devastation recorded in Russian-held areas pales in comparison to what is seen on the Ukrainian side.

The Kremlin referred questions about this article to Russia’s Defense Ministry, which did not respond.

A school in the village of Vilkhivka, occupied for weeks by Russian forces.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

A destroyed operating room in a hospital in Huliaipole.

Diego Ibarra Sánchez for The New York Times

Few places have been as devastated as Marinka, a small town in eastern Ukraine.

Comprehensive School No. 1, where so many young Ukrainians learned to write their first letters, has been blown apart. The Orthodox Cathedral, where couples were married, has been toppled. The chestnut-lined streets where generations strolled, the milk plant and cereal factory where people worked, the Museum of Local Lore, the Marinka Region Administration Building, go-to shops and cafes — all landmarks for generations — have been reduced to faceless ruins.

The damage runs into the billions, but the true cost is much higher. Marinka was a community. Marinka was living history. Marinka was a wellspring for families for nearly 200 years. Its erasure has left people feeling lost.

“If I shut my eyes, I can see everything from my old life,” said Iryna Hrushkovksa, 34, who was born and raised in Marinka. “I can see the front gate. I can walk through the front door. I can step into our beautiful kitchen and look into the cupboards.”

“But if I open my eyes,” she said, “it’s all gone.”

People’s Museum of History of Konstantynivka

Before everyone fled, when a strong wind came from the west, the people in Marinka used to do something slightly provocative: They would tie a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag to a helium balloon and float it across the nearby frontline to land somewhere in Russia-controlled territory.

“True Ukrainians lived here,” said Ms. Hrushkovska’s mother, Hanna Horban. “They worked in the fields and factories, they created their future and the future of their children. They lived under a Ukrainian sky, free and our sky.”

Reminiscing about her old town makes her eyes well up. Sometimes, she says, she sees Marinka in her dreams.

It’s the same for many others. A young Ukrainian woman in Berlin recently opened a photo exhibition on Marinka. Videos have surfaced on social media featuring photos of pre-war Marinka with sad music playing in the background. Some of Marinka’s displaced people have chosen to hang together, in another town, Pavlograd, a hundred miles away.

In many ways, the story of this one town — its closeness, its vulnerability and its ruin — is the story of this war and perhaps all wars.

The Horbans settled down in Marinka at least three generations ago. By the early 1970s, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, they had built their own house at 102B Blagodatna Street. It was large, by Soviet standards: around 1,200 square feet, with three bedrooms and bright red tiles leading to the front door. In the yard, they raised ducks, chickens, two cows and two pigs; they grew all kinds of vegetables, from potatoes to peas; and they plucked apples, cherries, peaches and apricots from their own trees.

“In the 1990s,” Ms. Hrushkovska said, “we survived off this.”

Marinka started out as a farming hamlet, founded in 1843 by adventurous peasants and Cossacks from the Eurasian steppe. Legend has it that it took its name from the founder’s wife, a friendly Mariia.

By the early 20th century, this entire swath of eastern Ukraine transformed. Iron and coal were discovered, in a region soon to be called the Donbas, and the city of Donetsk became an industrial hub. Marinka, about 15 miles away, shifted from a quiet farming town to a busy suburb.

By the mid-1960s, it had a coal mine, a milk factory, a tire factory, a bread factory and soon a museum, a public sauna and two public swimming pools.

Photos from 1917 and 1970, courtesy of the People’s Museum of History of Konstantynivka; 2015, Celestino Arce/NurPhoto, via Getty Images; 2022, Tyler Hicks/The New York Times; 2022, Laura Boushnak for The New York Times; 2023, Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times.

In the spring, the back lanes smelled of fresh flowers. In the summer, kids swam in the Osykova River. In the fall, workers piled into trucks heading for the collective farms and harvested immense amounts of wheat, afterwards swigging vodka straight from the bottle and dancing in the stubbly fields. The best restaurant in town was Kolos, known for its “Donbas cutlet,” a cut of high-quality pork, breaded and cooked with a hunk of butter.

“Marinka was blooming,” said Ms. Horban, who was also born here.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Marinka sank into disorder. State-owned enterprises shut down and Ms. Horban’s husband, Vova, a veterinarian, lost his job and had to dig coal for a living, at age 40.

Things stabilized by 2010, and bolstered by trade with Russia, Donetsk developed into one of Ukraine’s swankier cities. Marinka prospered by extension and grew to around 10,000 people.

In the spring of 2014, everything changed, again.

“All of a sudden strange men appeared with weapons and started stealing cars,” said Svitlana Moskalevska, another longtime resident.

That was just the beginning. Violent protests broke out. Then shooting in the streets. The Russians were backing an insurgency in Donetsk. It was confusing. And terrifying.

By mid-2014 — after thousands were killed, including dozens in Marinka — Donetsk had become the capital of a new Russian puppet state, the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. For several months, Marinka was occupied as well.

The Ukrainian Army eventually cleared Marinka, but it wasn’t strong enough to take back Donetsk. So the front line between Ukraine and Russia cut right through Marinka, less than a mile from the Horbans’ home.

People shut themselves in at night and drew their curtains, fearful of being shelled. Basic services collapsed. Marinka used to get treated water from Donetsk but the Russians cut off the pipes, leaving it no choice but to hook up to the Osykova River.

“It was disgusting,” said Olha Herus, Ms. Horban’s cousin. “Fish came out of the faucet, sometimes even little frogs.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the first places it attacked was Marinka. This time, the Russians bombed the town with aircraft and heavy artillery, causing far greater damage than in 2014.

Pre-war Wikimedia Commons via Ліонкінг. April 2022, Serhii Nuzhnenko, Reuters. June 2022, by Gleb Garanich, Reuters. January 2023, by Leonid ХВ Ragozin via social media.

Ms. Hrushkovska and her daughter, Varvara, evacuated a few days later. Some older residents, like Ms. Herus’s mother, Tetiana, refused to leave. She told everyone that she had become an “expert” at identifying the different types of munitions flying around — artillery, mortars, tank rounds, hand grenades, airplane bombs. She assured her family that she always knew when to seek shelter in the vegetable cellar. But at a deep level, it seems she simply didn’t want to leave.

“You have to understand,” Ms. Herus explained. “In Ukraine, people don’t like to move from one region to another. This is the mentality. We like living in one house for three to four generations.”

On April 25, 2022, Ms. Herus’s mom called and uttered two words no one could recall her using before: “I’m scared.”

An hour later she was killed.

The White Angels, a volunteer paramedic group, evacuated Marinka’s last residents in November 2022.

Source: Satellite image by Maxar Technologies, June 2022

The New York Times

The Devastation Grows

In the early months of the war, the Russians quickly captured several cities in eastern Ukraine. They almost captured Kyiv. Since then, the conflict has largely settled into a war of attrition, which favors the Russians with vastly more men and ammunition. The spikes on the following map show the heavy damage since the initial Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian military lost Marinka in December 2023.

They had been fighting for the city since 2014. Hundreds if not thousands of men from both sides died for it. At the very end, a small group of Ukrainian soldiers were holed up on the western edge of town in a warren of tunnels and pulverized basements. The rest was Russian territory.

When the Ukrainians peeked their heads out, they were stunned.

“I saw a picture of Hiroshima, and Marinka is absolutely the same,” said one Ukrainian soldier, Henadiy. “Nothing remains.” Following military protocol, he provided only his given name.

Another soldier, who asked to be identified by his call sign, Karakurt, described cars with the paint scorched off, houses cut down to their jagged foundations and long, empty roads that sparkled with glass and smelled of dust, smoke and gunpowder.

“Whatever could burn, burned,” he said.

The scars of war

Since the beginning of the war, satellites have flagged more than 210,000 buildings in Ukraine as damaged. About half of them are in the Donbas.

Source: Damage data by Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek based on InSAR data from Copernicus Sentinel-1. Building footprints by OpenStreetMap and Microsoft Bing. Front lines of the first day of the month between March 2022 and January 2024 by the Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project

The New York Times.

Ukraine is determined to rebuild. The hope, however distant, is that with international cooperation Ukraine will seize Russian assets and force Russia to foot the bill for the reconstruction of entire cities like Marinka.

But a long war may still stretch ahead. In recent months, the Russians have had the upper hand, destroying more communities as their army seems to stagger inexorably forward. Ten million Ukrainians have fled from their homes — one in four people.

Last spring, a few dozen people from Marinka gathered at a school in Pavlograd, which is considered reasonably safe. The children wore crisply ironed embroidered shirts called vyshyvankas. In a large room with big windows, they performed dances and sang patriotic songs that were beamed by video to displaced Marinka people around the world. Adults stood along the wall, tears dripping down their faces.

Children whose families fled Marinka celebrating Ukrainian folk traditions in Pavlograd.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

“You know the simplest way to make a person cry?” Ms. Hrushkovska asked. “Make them remember their city and their home.”

She and her daughter, Vavara, 13, are now squeezed into a small, two-room apartment in Pavlograd.

“My old kitchen was bigger than this whole place,” she joked.

Then she broke into tears.

Varvara Hrushkovska, right, and her friend Hanna Kovalenko, whose families fled Marinka, in Pavlograd. Next to them is Varvara’s grandmother Hanna Horban.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Ms. Hrushkovska grew up in Marinka. She was married in Marinka. She raised Vavara in Marinka. Her grandparents died in Marinka. She knows she can never go back to Marinka. She senses that for the rest of her days, she will suffer from something that has no cure: everlasting homesickness.

She is considering moving abroad with her daughter.

“No matter how unpatriotic it may sound, there’s not much future for her in Ukraine,” Ms. Hrushkovska said.

“It’s not that we want to leave,” she quickly added. But with Marinka gone, she said, “we don’t know where else to go.”

Artem Hoch, 4, and his brother Danylo, 14, at their new home in Pavlograd.

Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times

Sources

The analysis of damage to built areas across Ukraine was conducted in collaboration with Corey Scher, PhD candidate, City University of New York and Jamon Van Den Hoek, Associate Professor of Geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences (CEOAS) at Oregon State University using 10,866 Sentinel-1 images from Copernicus.

Additional data sources include East View Geospatial (settlement boundaries); Microsoft Bing and OpenStreetMap (building footprints); Global Human Settlement Layer (built area); Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies (satellite imagery); and Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (historical front lines).

The archival photograph of a street scene in Marinka from the top of the story is from kumar.dn.ua. The soldiers walking through a field is by Tyler Hicks/The New York Times, and the drone photo of devastated Marinka is by Finbarr O’Reilly for The New York Times. Satellite image by Planet Labs.

Additional work

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn, Evelina Riabenko and Olha Kotiuzhanska contributed reporting. Helmuth Rosales, Zachary Levitt, Jeremy White, Jaime Tanner, Agnes Chang and Martín González Gómez contributed additional work.

Methodology

To document urban areas of Ukraine that were damaged during the war, we worked with remote sensing scientists to analyze changes in satellite radar data from before the war until December 2023.

A detailed technical methodology is available from the scientists, Corey Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek.

The analysis relies on open source data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 program known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. These images are captured in each specific area once every 12 days.

The researchers compared images taken in every part of Ukraine before the war to images taken during the war — about 50 terabytes of imagery in total. They identified specific kinds of changes that could indicate damaged structures.

Researchers took measures to exclude other kinds changes picked up in the environment — such as seasonal changes in tree and snow cover, and human activity like mining or traffic. They excluded changes not in built areas, as defined by the 2020 Global Human Settlement Layer provided by the European Space Agency.

To spot check the data, The Times used high resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, comparing the data to imagery from hundreds of settlements across Ukraine. Crimea, Sevastopol and oblasts west of Vinnytsia were excluded from the analysis because of human activities like construction and environmental conditions — such as weather, soil and vegetation — that made it more difficult to accurately distinguish structural damage.

To estimate that about 210,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine, The Times compared the damaged areas to data on more than 17 million building footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft Global ML Building Footprints. To roughly estimate the number of churches, hospitals, schools and other protected sites that have been damaged, The Times compared the damaged areas with known building categorizations from OpenStreetMap. The true totals of protected buildings are higher, as the categorization of many buildings is unknown.

The overall picture shown here is intentionally conservative. The full extent of the destruction is likely to be worse than what the analysis can confirm.

World

Snoop Dogg, Lainey Wilson, Huntr/x and Andrea Bocelli Deliver Christmas-Themed Halftime Show for Netflix’s NFL Lions-Vikings Telecast

Published

6 hours ago

December 26, 2025

Press Room

Snoop Dogg, Lainey Wilson, Huntr/x and Andrea Bocelli Deliver Christmas-Themed Halftime Show for Netflix’s NFL Lions-Vikings Telecast

It was a holiday-tastic mix of Snoop Dogg‘s greatest hits and Christmas favorites that livened up Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium during the halftime break for Netflix‘s Christmas Day telecast of the NFL’s Detroit Lions game against the Minnesota Vikings.

Snoop Dogg, Lainey Wilson and Huntr/x of “Kpop Demon Hunters” fame brought their own brand of Christmas cheer to the event. Martha Stewart introduced the “Snoop’s Holiday Halftime Party” segment with a Snoop Dogg spin on “Twas the Night Before Christmas,” with lines such as, “Fans forgot about their beef, because gin and juice filled the air.”

Snoop entered the arena in a fire engine-red double breasted suit topped by a long red coat with fuzzy red trim. He walked through a clever medley of his signature hits, starting with “The One and Only,” that shifted into “My Favorite Things” and then into “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang.” He was backed by a small orchestra that assembled on the gridiron, along with energetic dancers dressed in suits that suggested candy canes. A high-energy marching band and drummers added to the wall of sound presented.

Snoop Dogg performs U.S. Bank Stadium on Dec. 25, 2025, in Minneapolis. (Julian Dakdouk/Netflix via AP Content Services)

Julian Dakdouk/Netflix via AP Content Services

There was some chatter online about the weak audio quality on Snoop’s vocals for telecast viewers. The challenge of delivering strong sound in a live broadcast was probably compounded by the fact that Snoop moved all over the stage and field during his performance.

Snoop was joined after a few minutes by Huntr/x, the trio of singers behind Netflix’s smash hit “Kpop Demon Hunters” movies, for a pop take on “The 12 Days of Christmas.”

Country star Lainey Wilson then joined the scene in a white sleigh for a spirited rendition of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Beloved Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli came out with his son, Matteo, to close out the show with a powerful duet on “White Christmas.” The elder and younger Bocelli were, of course, joined at the end by Snoop, Wilson and Huntr/x in classic network TV special closing number form.

This marks the second year that Netflix has carried two Christmas Day NFL games with a high-profile musical performance in between. Last year the appearance by Beyoncé added superstar status to Netflix’s inaugural “Christmas GameDay” telecast. This year, Snoop Dogg and friends, which included rising singer Tonio Armani, provided a modern spin on a feel-good, sing-along musical Christmas event. The segment closed with a cuddly picture of Snoop surrounded by his many children and grandchildren, all wearing holiday pajamas.

Earlier Thursday, Netflix carried the first of its two games, in which the Dallas Cowboys beat the Washington Commanders 30-23, in Washington.

(Pictured top: Lainey Wilson and Snoop Dogg)

*Snoop Dogg performs the halftime show during the game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions at U.S. Bank Stadium on Dec. 25. (Photo by David Berding/Getty Images)*
Getty Images

World

Trio of Palestinians arrested for allegedly torching Christmas tree at Catholic church in West Bank

Published

8 hours ago

December 25, 2025

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Trio of Palestinians arrested for allegedly torching Christmas tree at Catholic church in West Bank

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Three Palestinians were arrested on accusations of lighting a Christmas tree on fire and damaging part of a Nativity scene at a Catholic church in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the Palestinian Authority Police announced.

The attack happened at around 3 a.m. Monday, according to the church.

Palestinian Authority Police said Wednesday the three were taken into custody after a review of surveillance footage targeting the Holy Redeemer Church of Jenin. Tools believed to have been used in the attack were seized from the suspects.

Police condemned the apparent attempt to incite sectarian and religious tensions in the West Bank.

CHRISTMAS RETURNS TO HOLY LAND CITIES AS BETHLEHEM’S CHRISTIAN POPULATION DWINDLES, NAZARETH REMAINS STRONG

Palestinian parishioners check a recently installed Christmas tree after the previous one was destroyed at the Holy Redeemer Latin Church in the West Bank town of Jenin Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025. (AP)

The church shared photos on social media showing the skeleton of a synthetic Christmas tree that had been cleared of the green plastic branches, and red and gold ornaments were scattered across a courtyard.

The torched tree was quickly cleaned up by the church, which erected a new one a day after the attack in time for Christmas Mass.

The church held a special ceremony with local Muslim and Christian leaders and politicians in attendance. Rev. Amer Jubran, the local priest at the church, said the arson was an isolated incident and emphasized the city’s unity.

“This occasion reaffirmed that attempts to harm religious symbols will never diminish the spirit of the city nor the faith of its people,” the Holy Redeemer Church said in a statement.

Palestinian Authority Police said the trio was taken into custody after a review of surveillance footage. (Getty Images)

The small Christian community in the West Bank is facing increasing threats of extremism from various sides, including both Israeli settlers and Palestinian extremists, prompting them to escape the region.

Christians make up between 1-2% of the West Bank’s roughly 3 million residents, and the vast majority of the community is Muslim. Across the entire Middle East, the Christian population has been declining as people have fled conflict.

In Israel, some church authorities and monitoring groups have documented a recent uptick in anti-Christian sentiment and harassment, including in Jerusalem’s Old City. Extremist Israeli settlers have also reportedly vandalized and torched areas around churches and Christian villages.

POPE LEO XIV DELIVERS FIRST CHRISTMAS CALLING FOR END TO VIOLENCE IN MIDDLE EAST, RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

Police condemned the apparent attempt to incite sectarian and religious tensions in the West Bank. (Getty Images)

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The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza kicked off a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military’s offensive targeting terrorists killing hundreds of Palestinians and displacing tens of thousands. Terrorists have also attacked and killed Israelis in Israel and the West Bank.

The conflict has coincided with an increase in Israeli settler violence and Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

World

Best of 2025: Top five defining moments in the European Parliament

Published

9 hours ago

December 25, 2025

Press Room

Best of 2025: Top five defining moments in the European Parliament

As the year draws to a close, Euronews explores the key moments that shaped the policy and politics at the European Parliament in 2025.

This parliamentary year was shaped by multiple attempts, albeit unsuccessfully, to topple the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen.

Then there was an emerging — if informal — alliance of conservatives with the hard right that could pave the way for a new right in the lead-up to the general elections in France, Italy, and Spain in 2027.

It was also the year when the parliament adopted a much harder line on migration, doubled down on simplifying red tape and regulation to assist the ailing European industry, and moved further away from the landmark Green Deal, now under scrutiny.

1. Fresh corruption scandal looming over the Parliament

A major corruption investigation rattled the European Parliament in March.

Belgian prosecutors investigated an alleged corruption involving MEPs and assistants of the European Parliament and the Chinese tech company Huawei.

According to the allegations, payments, excessive gifts such as food and travel expenses, and regular invitations to football matches were used to influence MEPs, which Belgian authorities regard as pointing to corruption.

All these incentives were allegedly intended to secure favourable political positions on issues of interest to the Chinese company.

Eight individuals were charged with offences including corruption, money laundering, and participation in a criminal organisation.

Prosecutors also asked to lift the immunity of four MEPs: Italians Salvatore De Meo and Fulvio Martusciello (EPP), Maltese MEP Daniel Attard (S&D), and Bulgarian lawmaker Nikola Minchev (Renew Europe).

They have denied the allegations.

The Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs is still discussing the four cases, with the decision on whether to lift or maintain immunity set for the first months of 2026.

In the meantime, the European Parliament has barred Huawei lobbyists from its premises in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg.

2. Von der Leyen’s Commission survived no-confidence votes

Members of the European Parliament tried three times to topple the European Commission, tabling almost back-to-back no-confidence votes in an unprecedented sequence for the chamber.

To be approved, any motion of censure requires at least two-thirds of the votes cast in the Parliament, representing a majority of all its members. The threshold is high, and none of the three votes held got close to forcing the Commission to resign.

But it was the gesture that mattered. This is a defiant parliament, even among her conservative ranks.

The first vote held in July was initiated by some members of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), challenging Ursula von der Leyen.

The 360 MEPs who voted against the motion of censure — and therefore defended the European Commission — were fewer than the 370 who had approved the Commission back in November 2024.

Several MEPs from S&D and Renew Europe groups, both part of the centrist majority, chose not to take part in the vote: it was a way of expressing their discontent with von der Leyen’s policies without supporting a motion coming from the far-right.

The following two votes held in October and tabled respectively by the Left and the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) groups, saw a more substantial majority defending the Commission, and von der Leyen’s position was strengthened as a result.

As one source told Euronews, the Parliament showed its teeth, and von der Leyen managed to prove there is no alternative to her leadership at the top of the Commission.

3. Magyar and Salis win against Hungary’s judiciary

Peter Magyar, the leader of the Hungarian opposition party Tisza, Klára Dobrev, a Socialist Hungarian lawmaker, and Ilaria Salis, an Italian activist and left-wing MEP, were sought by Hungary’s judiciary over different claims, but remained protected by the EU’s parliamentary immunity even as Hungarian MEPs tried to export domestic politics from Budapest into the grand stage of Brussels.

Magyar faced three requests to have his parliamentary immunity removed: two for defamation and one for allegations claiming he threw a man’s phone into the Danube river after an argument at a Budapest nightclub with a man who was filming him.

He considered the accusations a “political issue”, given his role as leader of the opposition to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his former romantic relationship with Judit Varga, who served as justice minister under Orbán, which did not end on amicable terms.

MEP Dobrev was also accused of defamation, after she claimed that a local official was involved in a paedophilia scandal that led to the downfall of Hungary’s President Katalin Novák and Varga, the ex-partner of Magyar. She maintained her parliamentary immunity.

Separately, Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, who was arrested in February 2023 in Budapest after a brawl in which she was accused of assaulting and beating two men described as far-right militants during the so-called Day of Honour, a neo-Nazi gathering in Europe.

The issue became a point of tension between Budapest and Rome, torn between Salis’ clashing political views with the Meloni government, and the duty to protect an Italian citizen abroad. Her parliamentary immunity was also maintained.

The Parliament rejected all the requests in a tense voting session on 7 October.

Salis’ case went down to the wire: in a secret ballot, 306 MEPs voted in favour and 305 against, revealing deep divisions within the Parliament.

Salis later referred to it as a victory against fascism in Europe.

4. The EPP’s ‘dangerous liaison’ with the far right

This year was also marked by the emergence of an alternative to the traditional majority between the conservatives, socialists and liberals in the European Parliament, all of whom are often presented as pro-Europe and pro-rule of law.

On specific occasions, the EPP abandoned its traditional allies to advance legislation with the votes of the right-wing ECR and the far-right PfE and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN).

The unofficial alliance benefited the EPP in votes on migration and environmental issues.

One example was a legislative package titled Omnibus I, proposed by the Commission to support European businesses.

The package diluted the EU’s due diligence law, which required companies to assess their supply chains for potential environmental and labour violations.

New rules on sustainability reporting and due diligence obligations, which were more relaxed than the original law, were initially agreed by the political groups of the centrist majority. However, some MEPs from S&D and Renew voted to reject them.

Therefore, on 22 October in Strasbourg, the lawmakers subverted the decision adopted by the Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee on 13 October and the simplification package was rejected with 318 votes against, 309 in favour and 34 abstentions.

Three weeks later, the EPP managed to pass the bill with the votes of the ECR, PfE, and ESN, rather than negotiate a compromise version with its traditional allies.

The package significantly changed the original provisions of the due diligence law, which would apply now only to companies with more than 5,000 employees and a net annual turnover of over €1.5 billion (instead of 1,000 employees and a yearly turnover of €450 million as initially redacted).

The Parliament’s adopted version also scrapped fines of up to 5% for non-compliance, introducing a vaguer formula around “appropriate levels” of sanctions, to be decided by the member states.

5. A harder line on illegal migration

December saw a rush in Parliament to approve key migration-related documents, a divisive issue.

In the final plenary session in Strasbourg, the Parliament approved a change to the concept of a “safe third country,” which will expand the set of circumstances under which asylum applications can be rejected, enabling EU countries to deport asylum seekers to third countries, even if they have a connection to it.

The other legislative bill adopted was a new EU list of “safe countries of origin” for the purposes of asylum, which now includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia, as well as all EU candidate countries except Ukraine. Nationality-based selection of asylum applicants from those countries seeking to apply for asylum in the EU would be assessed through fast-track procedures.

On migration, the Parliament’s and the Council’s positions are aligned, signalling a pivot into a harder line when it comes to illegal migration in Europe.