2025: A Year of Unprecedented Global Tension and Conflict

Mon Dec 29 2025 07:40:30 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

John Simpson, BBC's world affairs editor, reflects on the alarming geopolitical implications of multiple ongoing conflicts in 2025, including tensions between Ukraine and Russia, and how they could escalate into broader wars.

In 2025, John Simpson warns of an increasingly unstable global landscape with multiple major conflicts, particularly the ongoing war in Ukraine and its potential to escalate into world war. He discusses the ramifications of U.S. foreign policy under President Trump and suggests that the upcoming year could be pivotal for geopolitical alliances and the balance of power. The situations in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan are highlighted as key areas of concern, all amidst rising tensions with Russia and China.

Sensitive content: This article contains a graphic description of death that some readers may find upsetting

I've reported on more than 40 wars around the world during my career, which goes back to the 1960s. I watched the Cold War reach its height, then simply evaporate. But I've never seen a year quite as worrying as 2025 has been - not just because several major conflicts are raging but because it is becoming clear that one of them has geopolitical implications of unparalleled importance.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the current conflict in his country could escalate into a world war. After nearly 60 years of observing conflict, I've got a nasty feeling he's right.

Nato governments are on high alert for any signs that Russia is cutting the undersea cables that carry the electronic traffic that keeps Western society going. Their drones are accused of testing the defences of Nato countries. Their hackers develop ways of putting ministries, emergency services and huge corporations out of operation.

Authorities in the west are certain Russia's secret services murder and attempt to murder dissidents who have taken refuge in the West. An inquiry into the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skrypal in 2018 (plus the actual fatal poisoning of a local woman, Dawn Sturgess) concluded that the attack had been agreed at the highest level in Russia. That means President Putin himself.

The year 2025 has been marked by three very different wars. There is Ukraine of course, where the UN says 14,000 civilians have died. In Gaza, where Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu promised mighty vengeance after about 1,200 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023 and 251 people were taken hostage.

Since then, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action, including more than 30,000 women and children according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry – figures the UN considers reliable.

Meanwhile there has been a ferocious civil war between two military factions in Sudan. More than 150,000 people have been killed there over the past couple of years; around 12 million have been forced out of their homes.

In the coming year, 2026, though, Russia, noting President Trump's apparent lack of interest in Europe, seems ready and willing to push for much greater dominance.

Altogether, then, 2026 looks like being an important year. China's strength will grow, and its strategy for taking over Taiwan - Xi Jinping's great ambition - will become clearer. It may be that the war in Ukraine will be settled, but on terms that are favourable to President Putin.

If you thought World War Three would be a shooting-match with nuclear weapons, think again. It's much more likely to be a collection of diplomatic and military manoeuvres, which will see autocracy flourish. It could even threaten to break up the Western alliance. And the process has already started.