The war in Ukraine has been ravaging European economy for the past year. Marking the recent one-year anniversary of the invasion, this article looks at the economic sanctions imposed upon Russia and assesses their effect.

How come, compared to what is going on in Western Europe, Hungary seems to be an island of peace for gay and trans people? How can it be that the Hungarian government is constantly accused internationally of homophobic campaigns, yet it is not here that the murders and rapes, the thousands of atrocities that occur every year, happen, but in the liberal West?

‘After Israel left Gaza, I was hoping that they would take what we left there, and turn that area into a paradise. It could have been the Singapore of the Middle East with beautiful beaches. We left many hothouses and other buildings, and they destroyed it all. They took the pipes left from the irrigation, turned them into rockets, and launched them back at us.’

In a controversial move, the character of Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is no longer referred to as ‘fat’, but rather, ‘enormous’; Mrs Twist in The Twists is no longer called ‘beastly and ugly’, she’s simply ‘beastly’ now; and the ‘Cloud-Men’ from James and the Giant Peach are gender-exclusively called ‘Cloud-People’.

Many of those deported did not even make it alive to their destination, but died on the way to the Soviet Union. These people were not even registered, so there is no information about how many they were. The purpose of their abduction was to rebuild the Soviet infrastructure that had been practically destroyed in the war, so to use them for free slave labour.