Two jaguar cubs burned to death, their small bodies carbonized. Tapirs with raw, bloodied paws had been scalded by smoldering cinders. Nests of unhatched eggs from rare parrots were consumed by flames as tall as trees.

Wildfires are laying waste to Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland and one of the most important biodiversity sanctuaries on the planet.

And the blazes, the worst on record since Brazil started tracking fires in 1998, are taking a deadly toll on wild animals, including at-risk species that scientists have been working for decades to protect.

“We’re watching the biodiversity of the Pantanal disappear into ash,” said Gustavo Figueirôa, a biologist working for SOS Pantanal, a conservation nonprofit. “It’s being burned to a crisp.”

The Pantanal is a maze of rivers, forests and marshlands that sprawl over 68,000 square miles, an area 20 times the size of the Everglades. About 80 percent lies within Brazil, with the rest in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Usually flooded for much of the year, the Pantanal in recent years has been parched by a string of severe droughts that scientists have linked to deforestation and climate change.

Since the start of the year, wildfires have burned over 7,000 square miles, an area the size of New Jersey, in Brazil’s share of the Pantanal.

The wetlands, parts of which are on UNESCO’s list of heritage sites because of their rich biodiversity, are home to the world’s biggest parrot, the highest concentration of caimans and threatened wildlife like the giant otter.

They also harbor animals that have evolved in ways distinctive from others in their species, like larger jaguars that dive into flooded plains to fish for food.

Researchers have counted at least 4,700 plant and animal species in the Pantanal, though they say many more have yet to be discovered by scientists.

“There’s so much we still don’t know,” said Luciana Leite, a biologist and a climate campaigner for the Environmental Justice Foundation. “It’s such a special region.”

But the wildfires, fanned by strong winds and searing temperatures, are threatening this natural laboratory, killing or injuring giant anteaters, lowland tapirs, marsh deer, hyacinth macaws and caimans.

The flames have caught even jaguars, normally agile enough to escape most dangers. Three have been found dead since the fires erupted, while four others were rescued and treated for burns, according to conservationists in the region.

“If the jaguar — an animal that runs, climbs, swims — is being affected on this scale, what chance do slower animals have?” said Enderson Barreto, a veterinarian and a director of the Response Group for Animals in Disasters, a volunteer organization working in the Pantanal.

Jaguars are listed as vulnerable in Brazil, which is home to about half of the world’s population of the animal. Now, the fires are approaching a reserve that is home to the world’s highest density of jaguars (four to eight animals for each 40 square miles), and experts fear that the death toll of jaguars, and many other animals, may climb.

“We’re really nervous watching this unfold,” said Mr. Barreto, who is working on the front lines of the rescue efforts inside the Pantanal. “The outlook is not good.”

Scientists say it is too early to say precisely how many animals are dying in the blazes, since many are perishing in remote regions that rescue workers cannot reach. But they fear the toll could exceed that of fires that ravaged the region in 2020, killing some 17 million animals and burning nearly one-third of the Pantanal in Brazil.

“We’re not only witnessing a repeat of a tragedy,” Dr. Leite said. “It’s actually a situation that’s much worse.”

One animal that became a victim was named Gaia and had played a key role in the Pantanal’s fledgling ecotourism industry for a decade. Spunky and social, Gaia, a 130-pound spotted jaguar, did not shy away from the pickup trucks carrying tourists from a nearby ecolodge. She became a local celebrity among wildlife enthusiasts.

Then, this month, the flames arrived at breakneck speed. Gaia didn’t have time to flee.

The news jolted Mr. Figueiroa, who had monitored the jaguar and her siblings when they were still cubs. “That was one of the best sightings of my life,” he said, lifting a pant leg to reveal a tattoo of Gaia’s sister on his calf.

“When I saw Gaia burned, turned into coal, I could just imagine the pain she must have felt,” Mr. Figueiroa added. “It was a feeling of frustration and despair and helplessness.”

The fires have also killed at least three giant anteaters, mammals known for their distinctive long snout and two-foot-long tongue, which they use to scoop up insects.

Believed to have evolved over millions of years, the species is threatened with extinction in Brazil, and its population there has shrunk by 40 percent over the last two decades, said Flávia Miranda, president of the Tamanduá Institute, a nonprofit working to protect anteaters.

“With the loss of these animals,” Dr. Miranda said, “we lose an evolutionary story that has not yet been fully told.”

The flames from the fires have reached tree crowns and scorched 80 percent of a crucial nesting area for hyacinth macaws, large, bright blue parrots that conservationists consider vulnerable and whose population is declining.

The blazes have also disrupted food chains, leaving behind a barren landscape devoid of water and essential food sources, like plants, insects and smaller animals.

Experts think the wildfires will continue at least until October, when the expected rainy season may bring some relief. The flames are intensifying pressure on an ecosystem already stressed by unusually frequent fires in recent years, casting doubt on whether it can fully recover.

If it doesn’t, countless species may lose their last sanctuaries in South America, including the lowland tapir, according to Patricia Medici, a biologist and conservationist who studies the species. “In the Pantanal,” she explained, “the tapir is in paradise.”

For scientists like Dr. Leite, who have devoted much of their lives to safeguarding vulnerable wildlife in this region, the future looks bleak. She wonders, she said, whether the Pantanal, a rare bastion of nature where humans can still witness wildlife in abundance, will remain intact for the next generation.

“I don’t know whether my son will have the privilege to look a jaguar in the eye, like I have so many times,” Dr. Leite said, wiping away tears. “We’re losing this really magical place.”

Lis Moriconi contributed reporting.

In the darkness of the cellar in the eastern Ukrainian town of Toretsk, the soldiers did not know how close the Russian glide bombs were landing. But the sudden change in air pressure that accompanied bone-rattling booms testified to the bombs’ destructive force as they tore into nearby buildings.

At dawn, during a lull in the attacks, several Ukrainian soldiers dashed out and saw a fire triggered by one of the bombs still raging through the ruins of a building about 150 yards away — the narrow margin between life and death.

There are many ways to kill and be killed in Russia’s war with Ukraine, but Ukrainian soldiers say that glide bombs are perhaps the most terrifying. They are free-fall bombs, many left over from the Soviet era, but now outfitted with pop-out wings that feature satellite navigation, turning them into guided munitions.

Referred to alternatively as “KABs” or “FABs,” they weigh between 500 and 6,000 pounds and are packed with hundreds of pounds explosives. A single blast can reduce a high-rise apartment building to rubble and obliterate even concrete fortifications.

“It is scary and very fast,” said Stanislav, a 28 year-old Junior Sergeant with Ukraine’s 32nd Mechanized Brigade, as Russian fighter jets unleashed the powerful guided bombs in the direction of his unit. “I just pray every time.”

In recent months, Russia has used the bombs to devastating effect, tilting the balance of fighting in eastern Ukraine in Moscow’s favor and allowing Russia to continue to make steady gains in Donetsk region. The bombs have also allowed Russian forces to raze whole towns and villages with ever greater speed.

In the midst of the midsummer fighting around Toretsk, journalists from The New York Times were allowed to visit the town one night to witness the challenges facing Ukrainian forces as they try and hold positions under withering bombardments.

“The same thing every day,” said Jackson, a 29 year-old Junior Sergeant who commands a drone platoon for the 32nd. “We arrive at a position, they launch KABs, we hide, block our ears and open our mouths so as not to get a concussion,” he said.

Like Stanislav and others interviewed, he provided only his first name according to military protocol.

With Ukrainian forces almost completely pushed out of the small town of Niu-York a few miles to the south, the battle for Toretsk, a former mining town, is now underway.

Along with the Russian advance in the direction of Pokrovsk, a critical Ukrainian logistics center about 40 miles to the southeast, the enemy’s push into Toretsk is threatening to undermine the defense of the Donetsk region.

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the hottest areas of the front say they are largely outgunned and outmanned. And Russia’s continuing ability to unleash unrelenting aerial bombardments, they said, continues to play a critical role in forcing them from even some of their most heavily fortified positions.

Finding a way to counter the threat remains a top military and diplomatic priority even as Kyiv engages in a bold gambit to flip the momentum of the war by mounting a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region of Russia.

Kyiv is hoping that the offensive will force Moscow to deploy more forces to defend that region, and thus ease the pressure along the eastern front by drawing in some of Russia’s better fighting forces.

So far, however, the Kremlin appears to be intent on maintaining its own offensive operations in eastern Ukraine and is pounding away at towns like Toretsk as relentlessly as ever.

It is a punch and counterpunch strategy for both armies — battered by years of brutal fighting, with each side wagering that their opponent will find themselves overstretched and newly vulnerable.

Ukraine has been developing its own long-range strike capabilities and is increasingly using domestically produced missiles and drones to target the airfields in Russia where the warplanes begin their bombing runs.

But Russian warplanes still managed to launch some 750 glide bombs in a single week in August, Mr. Zelensky said.

Even Ukrainian soldiers accustomed to years of artillery bombardments shudder at the destructive power of the weapons.

A 152-millimeter artillery shell — which Russia fires by the thousands every day — contains a bit more than 13 pounds of explosive material. A commonly deployed glide bomb, the FAB-1500, is packed with more than 1,300 pounds of explosives.

Since the bombs do not use propulsion or give off a detectable heat signature, they are hard to spot. They can be launched from Russian warplanes dozens of miles behind the front lines, relatively safe from Ukrainian air defenses.

When Russian planes fly closer the front, soldiers said, they are protected by Russian surveillance and attack drones that saturate the skies, searching for Ukrainian soldiers armed with portable antiaircraft missile systems.

“To shoot down a plane, you need to keep it in the sights for eight seconds and only then release the missile,” said Petro, 38, a Senior Sergeant of the 2nd Battalion of the 24th Mechanized Brigade. He previously fought around Toretsk and is now defending the nearby stronghold of Chasiv Yar.

Eight seconds in the open, he said, is an eternity. A Ukrainian defender can see the Russian jet streaking through the sky, he said, without being able to do anything to stop it because of the threat posed by the drones.

The best way to slow the pace of the attacks, Ukrainian officials have argued, is to hit the aircraft used to deliver the weapons, either on the ground or in the air.

Sgt. Jackson recalled the first time a glide bomb exploded near his position.

“I had such a feeling in my body that it was as if the wind swept through me at a very high speed, through each of my organs,” he said. “The feeling is very frightening.”

He sat on a battered cot in a basement bunker in the faint glow of video monitors, less than a mile from the Russians.

Outside, the charred and twisted metal skeletons of at least four vehicles littered the roadside out of the city, reminders that any movement can be deadly. Before they were destroyed, they had been used by volunteers to help civilians flee; now it is too dangerous for organized evacuations, city officials said.

It is not clear how many civilians remain in Toretsk, but by the end of July there were believed to be fewer than 3,500, Vasyl Chynchyk, the head of Toretsk military administration, said in an interview. More than 60,000 have been forced to flee the area and those who remain live mostly subterranean lives.

“There is not one building which has not been damaged or destroyed,” Mr. Chynchyk said.

The police department, the local administration building and the fire station have all been destroyed and the Ukrainian military works in the ruins.

While the list of places obliterated by Russian forces continues to grow, experiencing the annihilation of a city in real time remains deeply shocking even for the soldiers who have witnessed countless scenes of desolation and destruction.

“When you drive into a ruined town, it’s like hopelessness,” Stanislav said. “This town is crying.”

A few hours after he spoke, his unit’s basement bunker was destroyed by Russian artillery. Fortunately, the soldiers said, they all escaped with only minor injuries and were setting up elsewhere to continue the fight.

Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting from eastern Ukraine.

For months, tensions have been building in Mexico over the president’s sweeping plans to overhaul the judiciary, shaking the country’s political system and straining diplomatic ties with the United States.

This week, those tensions exploded into the open.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said on Tuesday that his government was “pausing” relations with the United States Embassy in response to criticism by the U.S. ambassador over the president’s push in the final weeks of his six-year term to make changes to the judiciary, potentially forcing thousands of judges from their jobs.

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When Vice President Kamala Harris said last week in Chicago, “you can always trust me to put country above party,” it struck a familiar note in Britain, where the new prime minister, Keir Starmer, used much the same phrase throughout the Labour Party’s relentless march to power earlier this summer.

It’s not the only parallel between Mr. Starmer and Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Both have shaken off or soft-pedaled some of their earlier positions as they try to broaden their party’s appeal. Both are former public prosecutors, who declare a ringing commitment to the rule of law. Both are operating in a volatile environment, where law and order is threatened by extremist elements.

In Mr. Starmer’s case, he was hit with anti-immigrant riots only weeks after his victory, after a deadly knife attack on a children’s dance class was followed by false claims, amplified by people on the far right, that the assailant was a Muslim asylum seeker. (The attacker was born in Britain, police said, and his parents were Rwandan Christians.) In Ms. Harris’s case, some analysts believe she could face unrest if she defeats former President Donald J. Trump in a close race and Mr. Trump or his supporters reject the results.

“These are different countries with different political systems, but there often seem to be parallels in their political trajectories,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.

Lessons from a center-left win

Labour and the Democratic Party have long shared tips and swapped strategies, most vividly during the era of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. So it was little surprise that key members of Mr. Starmer’s political brain trust were in demand at the Democratic National Convention to offer lessons from Labour’s recent victory.

“There was huge interest in how we won our campaign,” said Jonathan Ashworth, a close ally of Mr. Starmer and a former Labour member of Parliament, who was part of a British delegation that included the party’s political strategist, Morgan McSweeney, and Mr. Starmer’s communications director, Matthew Doyle.

Mr. Ashworth also served as a cautionary tale. A rising Labour star, he unexpectedly lost his seat because of a backlash over his party’s stance on the war in Gaza, which critics said was too slow to condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians. Drawing on that bitter experience, he said he had warned Democrats not to be complacent, even if the Gaza protests in Chicago were not as disruptive as expected.

“The anger was not captured in the polling; it wasn’t really captured in my street campaigning until the last few days,” Mr. Ashworth said. “They’ve got to make sure people don’t stay home because of Gaza.”

On the plus side, Mr. Ashworth said he saw parallels in how Mr. Starmer and Ms. Harris have framed the challenge of immigration, with both emphasizing the need to crack down on the gangs that traffic migrants across borders.

Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster who is advising Ms. Harris, said there were common threads in voter behavior in the British and American elections, but that the similarities between the campaigns was a coincidence. “The way Vice President Harris is meeting the moment is totally organic to her,” Mr. Garin said, “and I’m sure that is true of Prime Minister Starmer as well.”

A polling divide

The last time Britain and the United States seemed on the same political circadian rhythm was 2016 when the Brexit vote in June presaged Mr. Trump’s election that fall. The calendar has lined up similarly this year, with Britons going to the polls on July 4, five months before the Americans.

Yet until an embattled President Biden withdrew from the race last month, the two countries appeared to be diverging, at least in terms of the outcome for the major parties. Now the swift ascent of Ms. Harris has political analysts wondering whether the left-of-center victory in Britain could foretell a similar result in the United States.

There are many caveats, however: Mr. Trump is polling neck and neck with Ms. Harris, nationally as well as in several swing states, while Labour held a double-digit lead over the incumbent Conservative Party for 18 months before the election. In a year of anti-incumbent fervor around the world, Mr. Starmer ran as a challenger against a deeply unpopular government. Ms. Harris, meanwhile, represents the Biden administration against a challenger, albeit a polarizing one who also served in the White House.

Professor Fielding noted the difference between Britain’s winner-take-all system, which amplified the Labour majority, and America’s electoral college. “Harris could get a majority of the popular vote and still lose,” he said.

However different the mechanics of their races, Labour and the Democrats have sounded several of the same themes. The “country above party” phrase is calculated to identify both parties as patriotic, challenging the traditional claim of Conservatives and Republicans to that mantle.

For the first time, in 2022, Labour opened its conference in Liverpool by singing the national anthem, “God Save the King.” In Chicago, the crowd waved a sea of American flags, a spectacle more common at a G.O.P. convention.

Like Mr. Starmer, who ran for party leader in 2020 on a more left-wing platform than his election campaign this year, Ms. Harris has changed some positions. She hardened her stance on border policy and reversed her opposition to fracking. He, after being elected, suspended Labour ministers in Parliament who balked at his refusal to abolish a cap on child welfare payments to families.

Also like Mr. Starmer, Ms. Harris has been a cautious campaigner, refusing to be drawn out on sensitive issues. In Britain, that is known as the “Ming vase strategy,” after Mr. Blair, who was likened to a man “carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor,” as he nursed his party’s lead before the 1997 vote.

Mr. Blair and Mr. Clinton were both adherents of the “third way,” a 1990s-era centrist political philosophy, which they adapted to modernize their parties and make them more appealing to a broader pool of voters.

Three decades later, there is no comparable formula for Ms. Harris to fend off Mr. Trump. His populist message parallels that of Britain’s Nigel Farage and his insurgent hard-right party, Reform U.K., which racked up more than four million votes. The anti-immigrant passions that fueled Reform’s vote found a more violent expression in the riots.

To some observers, the shared background of Ms. Harris and Mr. Starmer as prosecutors raises questions about whether she would respond to any postelection unrest like he did. Encouraged by the prime minister, British authorities arrested more than 1,000 people who took part in the riots and have charged more than 700.

Although Ms. Harris shares Mr. Starmer’s left-of-center political instincts, she presented herself in Chicago as an unyielding protector of the rule of law. She accused Mr. Trump of sending “an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers,” and painted him as a serial lawbreaker.

“What if, instead of another Jan. 6, we have a series of right-wing riots around immigration?” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School and a former legal official in the Obama administration, who has taught at Oxford. “It’s really about what Kamala Harris would do.”

Russia launched a fresh wave of pre-dawn missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and several other large Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, the second day of a deadly, far-reaching bombing campaign that comes as Moscow fights to fend off a Ukrainian offensive on Russian soil.

The early-morning barrage hit a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, killing four people and wounding several others, according to the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, who posted photographs showing the ruins of the hotel. The local authorities said two people also were killed in the city of Zaporizhzhia and that debris from downed missiles or drones sparked small fires in the capital, Kyiv.

Despite the bombardments of the last two days, President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a forum in Kyiv that he would press ahead with a diplomatic strategy to start talks.

Russia has over the past year fired large volleys roughly once a month in attempts to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defense systems with drones and missiles launched from multiple directions.

Many areas close to the front lines in Ukraine come under daily assault from Russian forces. But this week’s strikes have revived a broader sense of fear among civilians in bigger cities as air raid sirens blare, and drones and missiles tear into hotels and residential buildings. Attacks on energy infrastructure have disrupted water and power supplies, deepening the hardships of war.

“It was hard yesterday,” said Samir Mamedov, 33, a Kyiv resident who works in business development. “We were running to the shelter because it was a big bombing.”

But he added that people in his circle were now accustomed to the conflict. “Last year we thought that the war would be finished soon, but everyone is getting used to the idea that this war is not going to end,” he said.

The barrage that began on Monday comes at a tumultuous moment, just three weeks after Ukraine launched an incursion into the Kursk region of southern Russia.

At a forum featuring military and government leaders on Tuesday, just hours after the attacks, Mr. Zelensky laid out looming challenges for Ukraine and what he described as a four-pronged strategy of diplomacy and military efforts to bring Russia to the negotiating table.

The diplomatic track is aimed at enlisting the broadest support possible among nations for Ukraine’s negotiating positions before a planned summit in November, to which Russian representatives will be invited, Mr. Zelensky said. Ukraine is also seeking security guarantees from allies including a request to join NATO.

Militarily, Mr. Zelensky said, Kyiv has taken the initiative with an incursion into Russian territory. As a fourth point, he cited economic measures without elaborating.

Mr. Zelensky said he would present that plan to President Biden at a meeting in September. He also invited the Democratic and Republican Party nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump, to review the strategy.

Still, he said, for now there were no indications that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia intended to end the war through negotiations, and pointed to the missile barrage that hit Ukraine this week as a sign Russia does not want talks. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, had said on Monday that, after the Ukrainian attack into Russia, the topic of talks had “lost its relevance.”

Mr. Zelensky conceded that the incursion into Kursk had not caused Russia to withdraw forces now fighting in eastern Ukraine and move them to the defense of Kursk. Russian troops are approaching the outskirts of the city of Pokrovsk, where residents were packing and evacuating on Tuesday.

“This operation did unveil certain matters, political as well,” Mr. Zelensky said of Ukraine’s surprise attack into Russia. “It started showing the Russian public it is more important for Putin to grab a town they’ve never heard about somewhere in Ukraine than to defend his own territory,” he said. “It gradually opened many eyes.”

Analysts have suggested a different possibility: that the incursion could have a rally-around-the-flag effect for Russians.

Mr. Zelensky, who since the invasion in 2022 has continually pressed for more weaponry and latitude to use it to strike inside Russia, floated new suggestions, some seemingly aspirational, to bring more military might to bear.

He said retired Western F-16 pilots could potentially volunteer to fly Ukraine’s newly acquired jets, for which the country has too few trained pilots. And he has asked, he said, for Poland to donate to Ukraine its legacy MiG fighter jets, which Ukrainian pilots can fly. “Give us your MiGs,” he said he had told Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk.

The commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, speaking at the same forum in Kyiv as Mr. Zelensky, said that Ukraine has taken control of 100 settlements in Kursk. The Russian authorities have repeatedly insisted the situation was under control and that its forces were repulsing the attack. The claims could not be confirmed independently.

Mr. Putin had promised a decisive response, and his spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that message on Monday, saying that Russia would inflict “an appropriate response.”

It was unclear whether the attacks this week constituted that retaliation.

Mr. Zelensky vowed on Tuesday to “pay Russia back” for the strikes. “Crimes against humanity cannot be committed with impunity,” Mr. Zelensky said in a post on Telegram.

Since the incursion into Russia began, Ukrainian troops have gone beyond Kursk to the neighboring region of Belgorod. On Tuesday, the regional governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said Ukrainian forces had launched 23 drones and dozens of munitions at towns and villages in the area over the past 24 hours.

He also claimed there were reports of Ukrainian troops trying to break through the border in the region, the Russian state news agency Tass reported, saying that the situation remained “difficult but under control,” without elaborating. That claim could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Russia’s Ministry of Defense or from Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down five cruise missiles and 60 exploding drones, suggesting that Tuesday’s assault may have been smaller than the one the previous day, when Russia launched more than 200 drones and missiles. Mr. Zelensky called Monday’s attack “one of the largest” his country has faced since Russia’s invasion began 30 months ago.

On Tuesday, air alarms went off throughout most of the country. In Kyiv, a loud explosion echoed in the downtown area around dawn. The city’s military administration said that the capital was under a “combined rocket and drone attack of the enemy,” and the authorities later said that falling debris from intercepted missiles or drones had set grass on fire in two city parks.

Ukraine relies on Soviet-legacy interceptors, which it had in great numbers before the invasion in 2022, and an array of Western-provided air defenses to shoot down incoming missiles and drones. They include long-range Patriots; the midrange NASAMS; and short-range, shoulder-fired Stingers, intended to prevent missiles from slipping through to hit targets.

Kyiv, though, has been attempting to ramp up its domestic military production to make itself less reliant on supplies from NATO allies.

Mr. Zelensky told journalists on Tuesday that the country’s defense industry had created and tested Ukraine’s first domestically produced ballistic missile. He gave no further details, and the claim could not be independently verified.

The attacks this week came against the backdrop of grinding battles in eastern Ukraine.

One of Ukraine’s aims with the incursion into the Kursk region was to force the Kremlin to divert troops from the front lines in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, where they have been advancing on the city of Pokrovsk, an important transport hub for Ukrainian forces.

But Russia has been pressing on with its offensive in the Donetsk region. General Syrsky said that Russian forces were attempting to cut off a road that runs northeast from the city and is used as a resupply route, adding that Moscow is “increasing its presence on the Pokrovsk front.”

Military analysts have for months argued that Ukrainian military resources are already stretched thin, raising questions about whether it can continue attacking inside Russia while maintaining its defenses in the east.

Two days after a deadly knife attack in the German city of Solingen, the youth wing of the far-right AfD party put out a call for supporters to stage a protest demanding the government do more to deport migrants denied asylum.

The authorities had identified the suspect in the stabbing spree that killed three people and wounded eight others as a Syrian man who was in the country despite having been denied asylum and who prosecutors suspected had joined the Islamic State. The attack tore at the fabric of the ethnically diverse, working-class city in the country’s west.

But even before the right-wing protests had begun on Sunday, scores of counterprotesters had gathered in front of the group home that housed the suspect and other refugees. They carried banners that read, “Welcome to refugees” and “Fascism is not an opinion, but a crime,” and railed against those who would use the attack to further inflame an already fraught national debate over immigration and refugees.

The dueling protests — not unlike those recently in Britain — are emblematic of Germany’s longstanding tug of war over how to deal with a large influx of asylum seekers in recent years. The country needs immigration to bolster its work force, but the government often finds itself on the defensive against an increasingly powerful AfD.

The party and its supporters are attempting to use the stabbing attack to bolster their broader anti-immigrant message, with some blaming the assault on “uncontrolled migration” even before the nationality of the suspect was known.

“They are trying to use this tragedy to foment fear,” said Matthias Marsch, 67, a Solingen resident who was at Sunday’s counterprotest and worries about a rightward drift in society. “I’m here to stand against that.”

In the end, just 30 or so far-right youths showed up and unfurled a banner that read, “Our People First,” but their speeches were difficult to hear over the chants of the counterprotesters.

Germany has been among the European countries most welcoming to immigrants, but as the AfD has gained traction — and as some local officials say they can no longer support the large number of asylum seekers — even mainstream politicians have begun to shift their stance. Many are now focusing on failed deportations and backing tougher measures to deport migrants who have been denied asylum but find ways to remain in the country.

The attack in Solingen has intensified the deportation argument. The suspect, identified only as Issa Al H., per Germany’s privacy rules, had managed to elude deportation after he was denied asylum. The right-wing is using that to argue that the government has lost control of immigration and, in this case, allowed a dangerous man to remain in the country.

Prosecutors are treating Friday’s attack as an act of terrorism given the suspect’s possible link to ISIS.

The attack has dominated headlines for days. “Why was the alleged Solingen assassin still in Germany?” asked the mainstream Süddeusche Zeitung newspaper — the same question raised by many other news organizations. Bild, Germany’s most widely read tabloid, ran an article suggesting that some German laws made the country a “‘paradise’ for terrorists.” And Der Stern, a glossy weekly, ran a column titled: “Not everyone who addresses the problems of immigration is a Nazi.”

Fearing a backlash from voters over the issue, mainstream politicians chimed in. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democrats, the conservative party that under Angela Merkel allowed more than a million refugees to come to Germany in 2015 and 2016, called for an end to accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan, two countries where many of Germany’s asylum seekers come from.

A majority of refugees who arrived during Ms. Merkel’s tenure have found jobs, learned the language and settled in. But consistently high numbers of new asylum seekers, including from Ukraine, have tested German tolerance, especially in places where mayors say they cannot provide adequate housing and other support.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who faces voters next year and whose party and coalition have been bleeding support, visited the site of the attack on Monday morning and focused in good part on the issue of deportations.

“We will have to do everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not remain here in Germany are sent back,” he told reporters, pointing to changes his government had already approved that have sped up deportations.

For Solingen, a working-class city, it has been difficult being at the center of the immigration debate. For years, the city had relied on immigrants to work in manufacturing jobs and the service industry, leading to a population that includes about 20 percent of residents who are not German citizens and many more who hold dual citizenship.

The attack, and the media spotlight, also reopened old wounds. For a time, Solingen had been a byword for racist violence after a neo-Nazi arson attack against a Turkish family killed five, including three children, in 1993.

The stabbing attack occurred during a city festival, and Philipp Müller, who had organized the musical acts that were part of the festivities, said: “It’s too early for politics. We first need to mourn.”

The task of telling festivalgoers what was happening had fallen to Mr. Müller, who climbed onto the stage and told the shocked audience members that they needed to leave, but carefully, since the attacker was still on the loose. In the confusion, the assailant had managed to slip away, discarding a six-inch kitchen knife, officials said; the suspect gave himself up during an expansive manhunt a day later.

Solingen is in North Rhine-Westphalia State, and Hendrick Wüst, the state governor, also railed against what he called “attempts to instrumentalize” the attack and to make Solingen “a political stage.” “Stay away from here, leave the people alone, leave this city alone,” he said at a news conference.

For now, that seems unlikely. The attack, coming just a week before the AfD could become the strongest political force in two states in the eastern part of the country, has rattled German politics.

The details of the suspect’s relatively short stay in Germany fit neatly with the far-right’s claims that Germany has lost control over the many refugees it hosts.

The suspect came to Germany late in 2022 and was scheduled to be deported in 2023 to Bulgaria, where he first entered the European Union and, under the bloc’s rules, where he was supposed to file his asylum claim.

But when officers showed up at the refugee center where he was living, he was nowhere to be found and his deportation was quietly dropped, according to the newsmagazine Der Spiegel and later confirmed by Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Because the six-month limit for deportation to Bulgaria had lapsed without further attempts to deport him, the suspect was ultimately given a special protected status accorded to people who cannot be returned to their home countries because of the risk of physical harm, according to Der Spiegel and Mr. Reul. He was then officially able to register to live in refugee housing in downtown Solingen, where he moved in September of 2023, according to the report.

Last year, more than 70,000 refugees were given such protected status, according to official figures. A recent court decision challenged the notion that all people coming from Syria would face undue danger if sent home.

The fallout from the attack has shaken other immigrants who fear they will be lumped together with the minority who commit crimes.

Emran Gadi, 34, shares those worries. He moved to Solingen from Serbia with his parents when he was a baby and went to watch the chancellor’s visit on Monday. He said that since the attack, he feels as if some people look at him with suspicion.

Asked what he thinks about the debate on immigration, he said: “You are asking the wrong person, because we came here as refugees ourselves and I know what it is to come as a refugee from war.”

Then he added, “But people who can’t integrate or adapt simply don’t belong.”