John Simpson: 'I've never seen a year as worrying as 2025'

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. Maybe, if this had been the only war in 2025, the outside world would have done more to stop it; but it wasn't. "I'm good at solving wars," said US President Donald Trump, as his aircraft flew him to Israel after he had negotiated a ceasefire in the Gaza fighting. It's true that fewer people are dying in Gaza now. Despite the ceasefire, the Gaza war certainly doesn't feel as though it's been solved. Given the appalling suffering in the Middle East it may sound strange to say the war in Ukraine is on a completely different level to this. But it is.