The array of issues that top diplomats from the United States and allied nations tried to tackle in Rome over two days this week was dizzying: embattled Ukraine, multiple Middle East conflicts, the Sudan civil war and other hostilities in Africa, instability in Haiti and Venezuela, and tensions arising from military actions by China and North Korea.

The officials held discussions over meals and in conference rooms in the Italian towns of Fiuggi and Anagni, south of Rome. Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, was there to represent the Biden administration at the end of President Biden’s term, as the world waited for the start of the second presidency of Donald J. Trump and a new era in diplomacy.

What became clear over the two days of the Group of 7 diplomatic meeting was the sheer difficulty the allied nations faced in trying to resolve the increasingly intertwined global issues, as well as the chasms that are widening between some of the allies.

One source of friction is the wars in the Middle East, as the Israeli military continues to pummel Gaza and as Israel and Hezbollah, the military and political group in Lebanon, warily advance toward a cease-fire deal.

At a news conference in Fiuggi on Tuesday evening, at the end of the sessions, Mr. Blinken underscored the violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza when asked about the Middle East. He also spoke of the role of the United States in promoting a potential cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

“We’ve been focused on trying to see that this cease-fire agreement gets over the line and gets implemented,” he said.

Mr. Blinken and other American officials denounced the announcement last week by the International Criminal Court that it was issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister, to stand trial on charges of forced starvation of Palestinians and other war crimes. The United States and Israel are not members of the court, and their governments have said the court has no jurisdiction over Israel.

Some officials among the allied nations have said that they support the court’s action and that their nations would arrest Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant if either set foot in their territories.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top representative for foreign affairs, is urging E.U. countries, which are all members of the international court, to help enforce its decision.

“We the European people will say, I hope, that we will fulfill all our obligations under international law,” Mr. Borrell said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Referring to an earlier arrest warrant that the court issued against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he added, “You cannot applaud when the court goes against Putin and remain silent when the court goes against Netanyahu.”

Among the G7 nations, Canada has said it would arrest the two Israeli men, while Germany and Italy have taken more ambiguous stances. Antonio Tajani, the Italian foreign minister, said at a news conference on Tuesday that it was unclear whether officials holding the highest posts in a country are protected by immunity and whether warrants could apply to nations that are not members of the court.

The diplomats decided to include language on Israel in the Group of 7 communiqué that did not directly mention the court’s actions.

“In exercising its right to defend itself, Israel must fully comply with its obligations under international law in all circumstances, including international humanitarian law,” it said. “We reiterate our commitment to international humanitarian law and will comply with our respective obligations. We underline that there can be no equivalence between the terrorist group Hamas and the state of Israel.”

On the issue of Ukraine and Russia, the diplomats used clearer language, saying, “Our support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence will remain unwavering.”

The communiqué also denounced China’s efforts to help Russia rebuild its defense industry and North Korea’s military aid to Russia.

Yet, the officials also know that Mr. Trump has a different view on military aid to Ukraine from Mr. Biden — the U.S. president-elect has threatened to cut off aid, and he could do so to try to force Ukraine to the negotiating table with Russia.

At the news conference, Mr. Blinken acknowledged that Ukraine might end up entering into talks with Russia sometime soon, saying, “What we’re determined to do in the remainder of this administration is to do everything possible to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to be able to, as I said, to fight through 2025 if necessary or, if there’s a negotiation, to be able to negotiate from a position of strength.”

Mr. Blinken began his official itinerary in Italy with meetings on Monday at the headquarters of the United Nations World Food Program in Rome, the first visit there by a U.S. secretary of state. He was accompanied by Jeffrey Prescott, the American ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.

The World Food Program is grappling with broad challenges that bedevil the allied nations and many other countries — hunger across large swaths of the globe exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major grain exporter; and the wartime conditions in Gaza and Sudan that have set the stage for famine.

“On the one hand, conflict is a driver of food insecurity and the suffering that follows, but food insecurity can also be a driver of conflict,” Mr. Blinken said. “And no one is doing more than the World Food Program to try to cut that knot and to address the urgent needs of so many people around the world, but in so doing also help alleviate or prevent conflict.”

For more than a year, the Israeli government has avoided holding itself to account for its failure to prevent the deadliest event in Israel’s history: the Hamas-led raid on Oct. 7, 2023.

An independent commission, founded by survivors of the raid and relatives of Israelis who were killed and kidnapped, tried to fill that void on Tuesday, releasing a scathing report that blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top military commanders for years of faulty decisions that made Israel more vulnerable to invasion.

Based on three months of interviews and public hearings, the commission’s report criticized the government’s decision to funnel money to Hamas, which allowed the group to entrench itself in the Gaza Strip in the decade before the attack. The commission, formally known as the Civil Commission of Inquiry of the Oct. 7 Disaster, condemned Mr. Netanyahu for sidelining high-level decision-making forums that might have stirred greater internal debate about the wisdom of such a policy.

The commission also criticized top generals for reducing the number of troops stationed along Israel’s border with Gaza, allowing loose discipline among the soldiers who remained, and prioritizing signal intelligence over human and visual monitoring of the Palestinian enclave.

“Netanyahu is responsible for undermining all decision making hubs,” the report said. Top military officials, it said, were to blame “for accepting the doctrine of ‘money for quiet,’ and utterly ignoring all other perceptions.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s office and the Israeli military declined to comment on the committee’s findings. The military is conducting its own investigations into specific incidents that took place on Oct. 7, while Mr. Netanyahu has said the time for accountability should come after the war in Gaza that was set off by the Hamas attack.

Founded in July by victims’ relatives as well as the survivors of several massacres, the commission was led by five former senior officials, including a retired judge, police commissioner and a city mayor. The panel heard testimony from 120 witnesses, among them former officials.

The inquiry is a striking example of how civil society in Israel has increasingly assumed roles over the past year that are typically performed by the government, including social support for displaced people and psychological support for victims.

Its existence highlights the frustration felt by many Israelis at the government’s refusal to hold itself to account. And it embodies how leaderless Israelis felt in the aftermath of the deadliest day in their history, as the government’s ineffectual response to the disaster undermined a widely held belief that the Jewish state — founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — would always be able to protect them.

For many, those feelings have been compounded by the spectacle of a sitting prime minister wielding power while simultaneously defending himself in a criminal corruption case. On Tuesday, an Israeli court granted Mr. Netanyahu’s request for a delay in his testimony, pushing it back until Dec. 10. He has described the accusations as unfounded.

“A civilian commission of inquiry can provide a space for venting for many populations in Israel who want to have an opportunity to tell their stories, but it is not an alternative to providing real lessons learned,” said Eran Shamir-Borer, a researcher and former military lawyer at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group.

As an independent initiative, the inquiry has no legal weight and is not expected to cause formal repercussions for the government, such as prosecutions. Those powers are reserved for a state commission of inquiry, which can summon witnesses, review classified materials, and recommend government action.

Such inquiries were set up in the aftermath of other national disasters, including the surprise Arab attack at the start of the Arab-Israeli war in 1973 that prompted a similar moment of collective trauma and reckoning. But Mr. Netanyahu’s government has so far avoided establishing such a commission, amid criticism that it is attempting to avoid scrutiny.

The civilian-led committee did not investigate the conduct of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which has been the focus of several international legal proceedings, including a charge of genocide at the International Court of Justice and accusations of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Similar accusations could potentially be addressed in a state commission of inquiry if one were ever established, Mr. Shamir-Borer said.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, the leaders of the independent commission lamented the fact that their body had needed to be founded in the first place. They called for the government to set up its own inquiry, urging elected leaders to facilitate a process of learning and correction among senior state officials and allow Israeli society to come to terms with the attack and the war that has followed.

“We are the first committee that would be happy to be dissolved,” Varda Alshech, a former judge who heads the panel, said at the briefing in Tel Aviv.

Hen Zander, a journalist whose sister was among the hundreds killed in the attack on the Nova Music Festival, said that the report “exposed many details that shook our world” and that “I’m afraid to find out what a state commission of inquiry, where all those involved would be summoned to testify, would uncover.”

But, Ms. Zander said, the victims’ families would continue pressing for just that.

“Otherwise, we will never reach the truth, and we won’t be able to prevent the next Oct. 7,” she said. “Our siblings and children would have died for nothing.”

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, hit back on Tuesday morning at President-elect Trump’s vow to impose 25 percent tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Mexico, signaling that her country was prepared to respond with retaliatory tariffs of its own.

Ms. Sheinbaum also said that raising tariffs would fail to curb illegal migration or the consumption of illicit drugs in the United States, an argument that Mr. Trump had made in his warning on tariffs.

“The best path is dialogue,” Ms. Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference, calling for negotiations with the incoming Trump administration while laying out steps that Mexico has already taken to assuage some of Mr. Trump’s concerns.

Ms. Sheinbaum, reading from a letter she is planning to send to Mr. Trump, noted that illegal crossings at the border between Mexico and the United States had plunged from December 2023 to November 2024, largely as a result of Mexico’s own efforts to stem migration flows within its own territory.

“Migrant caravans no longer reach the border,” she added.

Ms. Sheinbaum also called on U.S. authorities to do more to address the root causes of migration.

“Allocating even a fraction of what the United States spends on warfare toward peace building and development would address the deeper drivers of migration,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote in the letter.

Ms. Sheinbaum also raised the specter of a broader tariff war that could inflict damage on the economies of both nations, pointing to multinational car manufacturers like General Motors, Stellantis and Ford Motor Co., which have operated in Mexico for decades.

“Why endanger them with tariffs that would harm both nations?” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote. “Any tariffs imposed by one side would likely prompt retaliatory tariffs, leading to risks for joint enterprises.”

Mexico is far more dependent on trade with the United States than vice versa, exporting about 80 percent of its goods to its northern neighbor.

But numerous sectors in the United States, such as semiconductor and chemicals manufacturers, also rely on exporting to Mexico. Exports to Mexico accounted for nearly 16 percent of overall American exports in 2022.

Ms. Sheinbaum also said that Mexico was already taking steps to combat the smuggling of fentanyl to the United States. But she argued that the core problem was demand for fentanyl within the United States, calling the crisis “fundamentally a public health and consumption issue within your society.”

“It is widely known that the chemical precursors used to produce fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are illegally entering Canada, the United States, and Mexico from Asian countries,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote. “This underscores the urgent need for international collaboration.”

For Mohammad Kanso, the ancient Roman temples of Baalbek felt like home.

The 2,000-year-old ruins, the pride of Lebanon and considered some of the grandest of their kind in the world, were his childhood playground. When he grew up, he got the same job his father had, running the lights that illuminate the towering columns at night.

But as Israeli airstrikes crept closer to the site, his family was forced to flee earlier this month. Days later, a missile landed yards away from the temple complex, obliterating a centuries-old Ottoman-era building.

“My entire world went black,” said Mr. Kanso.

Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah has triggered a humanitarian crisis. Almost a quarter of Lebanon’s population of about five million has been displaced and more than 3,700 people have been killed, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. But it has also gravely threatened the tiny Mediterranean nation’s antiquities, a shared source of pride in a country long divided by sectarian strife.

The temple complex of Baalbek, which is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, is just one of the sites that are at risk. Archaeologists, conservationists and even the Lebanese military are now racing to protect thousands of years worth of Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman treasures.

Last week, UNESCO placed 34 cultural sites in Lebanon under what it calls “enhanced protection,” a measure that defines an attack on them as a serious violation of the 1954 Hague Convention and “potential grounds for prosecution.” But many antiquities are not on the list, and some have already been damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes, according to Lebanese officials and the United Nations, including historic churches and cemeteries, centuries-old markets and castles from the Crusades.

Even as cautious optimism mounts around a potential cease-fire deal, much of Lebanon’s heritage has already been irrevocably lost, and the sheer scale of the destruction remains unclear. Lebanon’s cash-strapped government would be forced to juggle the extensive cost of restoration with a deepening humanitarian crisis, and there remains uncertainty over whether a truce could hold and how restoration of these sites would fit in.

“They are destroying memory,” said Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly, a Lebanese archaeologist who runs Biladi, an organization focused on preserving the country’s heritage. She compared the damage from Israeli strikes to that carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in Iraq.

When asked whether Israel deliberately targets cultural sites, the Israeli military said in a statement that it strikes in Lebanon only when necessary, adding that sensitive sites are taken into account during military planning and that each “goes through a rigorous approval process.”

Israel has accused Hezbollah of embedding in civilian areas, including near cultural heritage sites. The Israeli military did not respond when asked to provide specific evidence of this claim, which archaeologists and Lebanese officials dispute.

The Lebanese military, which is not a part of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, has another mission: protecting the country’s treasures.

Gen. Youssef Haydar is spearheading these efforts. He leads a specialist regiment that has been transporting artifacts out of the country’s hard-hit south, including some dating back to the Roman and Byzantine civilizations.

At the regiment’s base, a few miles outside Beirut, General Haydar’s troops conducted drills in which they piled sandbags on top of real-life artifacts, including a sarcophagus, a strategy designed to protect them from shrapnel or the shock waves of nearby blasts.

“The more you sweat,” General Haydar said, as he watched his troops, “the less you bleed in war.”

There has been wide-scale destruction in dozens of historic border towns, archaeologists said, that has damaged or destroyed entire areas. Strikes have also expanded to include the centers of big cities, including in Baalbek and Tyre, where Hezbollah enjoys considerable support.

The large-scale destruction of towns and cities has even disturbed the dead. Historic cemeteries in Lebanon also have been damaged or destroyed amid Israel’s offensive, many of them considered heritage sites by archaeologists. The Israeli military said in at least one case that a Hezbollah tunnel compound had been built underneath a cemetery in southern Lebanon.

“It’s not collateral damage,” General Haydar said. “Why the cemeteries? This is heritage. This is history.”

Before the war, about 125,000 people lived in Tyre, about 10 miles from the Israeli border and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. But most have fled amid evacuation orders covering city blocks, and Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah have pounded the area in recent weeks.

Much of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes such marvels as the Tyre Hippodrome, a chariot-racing arena that was one of the largest in the ancient Roman world. The bombardment has already leveled modern buildings within the site, according to the U.N. agency.

Although no visible damage to the ruins has so far been detected, archaeologists say they can only conduct field inspections once the war ends, because of the risks to their lives.

Lebanon has endured myriad wars and crises that have tested conservationists. But it was Beirut’s deadly port explosion in 2020, which destroyed large parts of the capital, including historic buildings and artifacts, that proved most destructive. It was an especially hard-learned lesson for Beirut’s museums and galleries, some of which are now shielding their collections amid the war.

The Sursock Museum, which was heavily damaged in the blast, has in recent weeks moved its entire collection, which includes works by prominent Lebanese artists, into its basement, about 80 feet underground.

In the closed gallery recently, the walls and glass cabinets were stripped bare, and the building’s stained glass windows propped open to protect against sonic booms from the Israeli fighter jets circling overhead.

“We’ve learned one thing from the Beirut explosion,” said Rowina Bou-Harb, the museum’s chief archivist. “Save the heritage.”

Khalid Rifai, who leads government conservation efforts and recently fled his home in Baalbek, recalled how his unit struggled in the wake of the port blast.

“We didn’t have any materials, money, architects, and staff,” he said. “Right now, we’re facing the same crisis on a much wider scale.”

In Baalbek, the Israeli airstrike near the ruins earlier this month left stones and twisted rebar strewed in front of the temples. A burned-out bus lay abandoned in the empty parking lot where tourists once entered the site.

Although the temples remain intact, Mr. Kanso fears they will not survive.

“I hope they remain standing tall for all the coming generations to witness,” he said.

Reporting contributed by Jacob Roubai and Gabby Sobelman.

The belongings of Volodymyr Nikulin, a Ukrainian police officer stationed near the country’s eastern front line, boil down to this: a shrapnel-riddled car, a small sack stuffed with sweaters and pants, and two plastic bags filled with basic food and medicine.

Keeping it simple is essential for Mr. Nikulin, who has had to leave three cities to escape the advance of Russian forces in the country’s eastern Donbas region, losing his home each time. So he has learned to live with little, and to be ready to pack up on short notice.

He has barely bothered to settle into the friend’s apartment he currently occupies in Sloviansk, a city 15 miles from the combat zone, leaving the bedroom untouched and sleeping instead in a small office. The distant rumble of Russian bombing regularly echoes through the walls, a reminder he may soon have to leave everything behind, again.

“Who knows where I’ll be in a few months?” Mr. Nikulin said on a recent morning last month in Sloviansk, acknowledging that Russian forces in the area were creeping closer. He joked that he could at least count on his damaged car, recalling how it had helped him escape several Russian attacks.

“It’s my lucky car,” Mr. Nikulin, a 53-year-old police lieutenant colonel, said with a thin smile.

Mr. Nikulin’s story of fleeing city after city under assault — Donetsk in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took control of the city; and then, after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Mariupol in 2022 and Myrnohrad this summer — is emblematic of the plight of millions of Ukrainians displaced by the war. Like many, he has left beloved towns, watched his homes be destroyed or occupied, and mourned neighbors killed in the fighting.

As a police officer evacuating besieged cities, he has also braved ordeals, including helping journalists escape Mariupol so they could reveal harrowing images of the Russian onslaught there.

Working for the national police near the front lines means living with constant uncertainty amid Russia’s near-daily attacks. Mr. Nikulin often rushes to sites hit by missiles to help pull the wounded from the rubble. A police station where he used to work has been struck several times, and colleagues have been killed while guarding stations bombed by Russian forces.

“We’re targets for the Russians,” Mr. Nikulin said as he drove through Kramatorsk, another frontline city near Sloviansk. He was wearing a khaki jacket without insignia, to avoid being identified by disloyal locals who might tip off the Russians.

With Russian troops now advancing steadily in the Donbas, Mr. Nikulin’s cycle of evacuations may be far from over. Still, he believes he will one day return to his hometown, Donetsk, confident that the Ukrainian army will turn the tide on the battlefield.

A reserved man with piercing blue eyes, Mr. Nikulin grew up in Donetsk in the 1970s and 1980s when it was part of the Soviet Union. The son of a miner and a garment factory worker, he aspired to a military career and studied at the Donetsk Military Academy. He graduated in 1992, a year after Ukraine gained independence from the U.S.S.R., and he eventually joined the local police force.

Back then, Donetsk was afflicted by gang wars fueled by the post-Soviet economic collapse. “Everyday, there were several murders using firearms and bombs,” he recalled, as local businessmen, backed by gangs, fought for control over state-owned assets.

But over time, the city transformed and pacified. Mr. Nikulin grew fond of its gritty charm, a mining powerhouse reborn with gleaming skyscrapers and artsy cafes. One of his happiest memories is watching a 2012 European Soccer Championship quarterfinal match in Donetsk’s new stadium.

“The city was changing, developing, becoming more European,” he said.

Then, in the spring of 2014, pro-Kremlin, Russian-backed insurgents staged an armed uprising in Donetsk, rallying against Ukraine’s turn West. As the rebels quickly overran the city, Mr. Nikulin said he worked covertly with colleagues to secure control of computer servers containing critical financial and security data.

When he was finally forced to leave Donetsk that July, he packed only summer clothes, thinking he would return in a few weeks. “T-shirts, a cap, shorts — no jacket,” he said.

“No one understood that we would be gone for such a long time,” he said. He paused briefly and added, “I don’t want to say forever.”

Mr. Nikulin moved with his police department to the port city of Mariupol, further south, and quickly felt at home again. A dozen miles from Russian-seized territory to the east, Mariupol became an “island of freedom” for those fleeing Russian occupation, he said. Its lively markets and sunlit promenades along the Azov Sea offered a precious sense of normalcy.

Until Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Mariupol was a prime target for Moscow’s forces, which soon encircled the city. Inside, Mr. Nikulin and his colleagues worked to keep order, tackling looters who raided stores as panic gripped the besieged population, and assisting residents when Russian bombs fell on their homes.

The documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” filmed by Associated Press journalists who covered Russia’s siege of the city, opens with a tense scene of Mr. Nikulin, clad in body armor, inside a hospital as Russian tanks surround it. “Tanks have entered,” he is heard saying over a walkie-talkie, alerting Ukrainian forces. “I have a visual on it myself.”

Without Mr. Nikulin, the documentary, which won an Oscar this year for its gut-wrenching account of Russia’s brutal assault, might never have seen the light of day.

In Mariupol, he helped the Associated Press reporters find internet access amid attacks so they could transmit their images. Then, he smuggled them out of the city, driving them through 15 Russian checkpoints in his bomb-damaged car, with plastic covering its smashed windows. They hoped the Russian soldiers would not search the car and find the reporters’ cameras hidden under the seats, which would mean immediate arrest — or worse.

“It was stressful,” Mr. Nikulin said, recalling how he tried to distract the soldiers at checkpoints by offering them cigarettes.

Mykhailo Vershynin, who led the Patrol Police in Mariupol during its defense, said Mr. Nikulin “was like a father” to the journalists. “He really wanted the world to know what happened to Mariupol.”

After escaping Mariupol, Mr. Nikulin relocated to Myrnohrad, about 80 miles north. From there, he continued helping evacuate frontline eastern towns like Toretsk, which Russian forces recently entered.

His phone is full of videos showing brick houses flattened by bombs. Still, convincing residents to leave could be difficult, he said, because some are old and have never lived elsewhere, while others believe they will be better off under Russian rule.

“It’s complicated,” he said with a sigh. “But we have to get these people out.”

“For him, it’s more than just service — it’s deeply personal,” said Yevhen Tuzov, a Ukrainian volunteer who has worked with Mr. Nikulin on evacuation missions, noting that the police officer couldn’t bear to watch his home region be chipped away by Russia.

Last summer, Mr. Nikulin was wounded in the back by missile shrapnel while rescuing people after a Russian strike in Pokrovsk, near Myrnohrad. Despite the injury, Mr. Nikulin continued working, occasionally traveling to Kyiv to undergo three surgeries that removed the shrapnel.

Despite witnessing so many cities and towns fall to Russia, Mr. Nikulin has maintained his optimism. He says that while the first phase of the war, from 2014 to 2022, turned into a frozen conflict, complicating Ukraine’s efforts to reclaim lost territory, the full-scale war that began nearly three years ago presents an opportunity for Ukraine to regain its land.

“I know, it sounds so strange,” he said of his optimism. But he recalled how that same upbeat belief had driven him during the seemingly doomed escape from Mariupol in 2022. “Hope was our power.”

For now, however, Mr. Nikulin continues to retreat.

When Moscow’s forces launched a new offensive toward Myrnohrad this summer, he was forced to move again, this time leaving an apartment belonging to his wife’s family. He recorded a video of his departure in mid-August.

“Home sweet home,” he says in English in the video, before walking through corridors adorned with floral wallpaper and past a kitchen table strewn with apples, a kettle and salad bowls. His heavy breath is audible, betraying his deep emotion.

He concludes, “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.

Russia said on Tuesday that Ukraine had struck its territory again with U.S.-supplied missiles, just as the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia had unleashed an immense air assault overnight that involved nearly 200 drones.

The attacks were the latest in a series of intensifying air assaults between the two countries in recent days, in a sudden escalation that has shifted the focus away from ground assaults to a Cold War-style missile brinkmanship.

The Russian defense ministry claimed that Ukraine had used more than a dozen U.S.-delivered missiles known as Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to strike its territory twice, on Saturday and Monday. That followed a Ukrainian attack involving the same missiles last week, the first time Ukraine had used the longer-range weapons to strike in Russia since the United States granted permission earlier this month.

That strike prompted Russia to respond by test firing an intermediate-range missile designed to deliver nuclear weapons, though it was not armed with nuclear warheads.

The Russian defense ministry said in a statement that the Ukrainian ATACMS strikes on Saturday and Monday had been partly successful, damaging military infrastructure and wounding some soldiers in the western Kursk region. It was an unusual admission — Russia typically says it intercepts all the missiles fired at it — that could serve as a pretext for strong retaliation.

Moscow said it was preparing “retaliatory actions” to the latest attacks. The Ukrainian Army declined to comment about the attack in an email. Military experts said that videos of the Monday strikes that were shared on social media strongly suggested that it involved ATACMS.

The tit-for-tat air attacks have raised fears about the direction the conflict could take, with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia threatening nuclear strikes in a bellicose address last Thursday.

But Tom Karako, director of the missile defense project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Ukraine had much to gain by targeting Russian territory, which Moscow has long used as a rear base for launching air assaults and preparing ground offensives.

“Ukraine not falling for Putin’s saber-rattling makes a lot of sense,” Mr. Karako said. “They keep shooting.”

Military analysts say neither side has enough of the respective missiles to fundamentally alter the course of the war, which Russia is currently dominating with relentless assaults in eastern Ukraine, while also clawing back territory that Ukraine had captured in the Kursk region of southern Russia.

A video of the Monday attack verified by The New York Times showed a constellation of explosions near an airfield in Kursk, about 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. The explosions were consistent, analysts said, with impacts of cluster munitions, which are multiple bomblets packed in shells that disperse before impact.

Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow for air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said the distinctive impacts and range of the strike appeared to corroborate that ATACMS missiles carrying cluster warheads — a weapon supplied to Ukraine by the United States — were used in the attack.

John Kirby, a national security spokesman at the White House, confirmed on Monday that Ukraine had already used the missiles to strike inside Russia, including in the Kursk region, but did not specify when or where they were used.

Russia’s defense ministry reported that in Monday’s attack, five missiles were fired, with two hitting their targets, damaging a radar installation and causing casualties among military personnel. In the other attack on Saturday, involving eight missiles, one reached its target, while fragments injured two servicemen and damaged infrastructure, the ministry said.

On Tuesday, ambassadors from Ukraine and NATO’s member states met at Ukraine’s request to discuss the security situation after Russia’s use of the experimental intermediate-range missile, which was fired at the city of Dnipro, in central Ukraine. The strike caused little damage, but it raised alarm in Ukraine at a time when Moscow has been elevating threats of nuclear war.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly asked allies to send them more air-defense missiles, and senior Ukrainian military officials briefed the ambassadors via video link. During the meeting, NATO said in a statement, “allies reaffirmed their support for Ukraine.”

The statement repeated the assertion by NATO’s spokesperson, Farah Dakhlallah, that Russia’s use of such a missile would “neither change the course of the conflict nor deter NATO allies from supporting Ukraine.”

But months of Russian air assaults have depleted Ukraine’s air defenses, allowing more and more drones to break through Ukrainian cities.

A prime example came on Tuesday, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying that Russia had launched 188 attack drones against the country overnight, a record number in the war so far.

The air force added that it had shot down 76 of the drones in the “massive attack” but that nearly all the rest had disappeared from radar. It was unclear how many of those drones had been intercepted by other means, such as electronic interference, and how many had struck targets.

Some critical infrastructure was hit and residential buildings were damaged in several regions, according to the air force. Damage to the power grid in Ternopil, a city in western Ukraine, caused electricity and water outages, the local authorities said.

Russia’s military has attacked Ukrainian cities with waves of drones almost every night since September in a campaign that analysts say is intended to test and wear down air defenses. The drones have also targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a renewed effort to plunge the population into cold and darkness as winter sets in.

The overnight drone assault, however, stood out for its sheer scale and was the latest example of the tit-for-tat air attacks that have punctuated the war over the past week.

Russian drones have increasingly penetrated central Kyiv, home to government administration buildings and the presidential palace. The once rare buzz of drones flying overhead at night and the rat-tat-tat of heavy machine guns trying to take them down now echo regularly through the heart of the capital.

Devon Lum, Haley Willis and Steven Erlanger contributed reporting.

A heated and longstanding rivalry simmers between neighbors Colombia and Venezuela — not over politics, migration or even soccer, but over the humble arepa.

The round cornbread delight, a staple of both South American countries, appears everywhere from breakfast plates to late-night snacks, woven deeply into the fabric of each nation. Ingrained into everyday slang and popular culture, the arepa is much more than a meal.

But ask a Colombian or a Venezuelan who does it best — or where it originated — and you’ll find yourself caught in a culinary clash that transcends borders.

“Everyone defends their territory,” said Gustavo Zapata, 39, a chef at the Sancho Paisa restaurant chain, which is known for its traditional Colombian arepas in Medellín, the country’s second largest city.

The arepa debate mirrors other food fights around the world. Peruvians and Ecuadoreans argue over ceviche. Israelis and Lebanese have wrestled over hummus. Multiple Northern African countries lay claim to couscous. Australians and New Zealanders have feuded over pavlova, a meringue-based dessert topped with fruit.

But culinary disputes also have serious undertones. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, for example, has tried to use arepas as a nationalist rallying point, if not a political tool, claiming the food is from his country alone. And as millions of Venezuelans have migrated over the years because of the country’s economic and political crisis, they have brought their version with them around the globe, further stoking the great arepa battle.

“I used to think only we ate arepas,” Jesús Sánchez, 34, an owner of a Venezuelan restaurant chain in Medellín named Los Chamos, referring to Venezuelans. He realized otherwise when he started visiting Colombia 10 years ago. “They’re very different.”

Arepas have been eaten for thousands of years, estimates Ocarina Castillo, 72, an anthropology professor who studies food at the Central University of Venezuela.

When Spanish conquistadors explored northern South America in the 15th and 16th centuries, they encountered Indigenous people eating the corn cakes. The Spanish adapted them, Ms. Castillo said, eventually transforming the word “erepa” from the language of the Cumanagoto people, who lived in what is modern-day northern and eastern Venezuela, into “arepa.” Other Indigenous groups ate something similar, but gave it a different name.

Centuries ago, Ms. Castillo said, the borders we know today didn’t exist and people moved freely.

“We lose that perspective,” she said, “and that’s why we insist on giving a homeland to arepas.”

With some shared history and culture, along with a 1,400-mile border, Colombia and Venezuela have been, at times, allies or rivals. (In the 1800s, they were even briefly part of the same republic, called Gran Colombia.)

Since Venezuela slid into autocracy under Mr. Maduro, roughly a quarter of its population has left, almost eight million people since 2014, according to the United Nations.

More than three million Venezuelans have ended up in Colombia, a country of 53 million where the mixing of cultures has made the arepa debate more prevalent than ever.

Arepas in Colombia often accompany a dish, such as meat or soup, and can have a topping or occasionally a filling. But in Venezuela, they are an entire meal — large and stuffed with different fillings, from cheese to plantains to beef. In Colombia, arepas vary by region, while in Venezuela there are several varieties that are popular nationwide.

Then there is texture: Colombian arepas tend to be crunchier, whereas Venezuelan arepas are usually softer. In Colombia, people often buy their arepas from stores, while Venezuelans consider that sacrilegious because they are accustomed to making them at home.

Another difference?

“The Venezuelan arepa is made from corn flour, and we use the corn itself,” explained Andrés Giraldo Rueda, 35, a manager at a Sancho Paisa restaurant in Medellín. “Corn flour is easy to conserve and transport, so they can take it to all over.”

Mr. Giraldo’s restaurant, which also has a store, offers 14 types of arepas — white corn, yellow corn, corn treated with ash, with cheese mixed into the masa — and sells thousands of arepas every day.

On a recent morning, nearly every customer was eating an arepa, either with eggs or cheese or chicharrón (fried pork).

The answer to who is winning the arepa war depends on whom you ask. Ms. Castillo, the professor, said Venezuela was in the lead because of its vast diaspora across the world.

(Venezuelan arepas even reached the White House last year.)

“Are there Colombian arepa shops outside of Colombia?” said Mr. Sánchez, who moved with his family to Medellín years ago. They started selling Venezuelan arepas from a street cart in 2015, and it has blossomed into four restaurants with 40 employees, nearly all of them Venezuelan.

Juan Manuel Barrientos, 41, a Colombian chef who has earned two Michelin stars and has restaurants in Colombia, Miami and Washington, said the arepa contest was tied because of his country’s growing status as a destination.

“We have fed arepas to a lot of tourists in the past 10, 15 years,” he said.

(Colombian arepas even appeared in the Disney movie “Encanto.”)

This year, though, Mr. Maduro, the authoritarian leader who has been in power since 2013, declared a winner: In a slickly produced video posted on his social media accounts, he proclaimed arepas as Venezuelan.

“One thing is to eat the arepa — and arepas should be eaten wherever you want,” he said. “But another thing is not to know that the arepa is?” The crowd answered: “Venezuelan.”

Mr. Maduro said his government had begun preparing an application to UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, to give Venezuelan arepas a global cultural heritage designation.

On social media, the arepa rivalry has sparked fervent discussion, countless videos and has even been the butt of jokes.

Angelo Colina, a Venezuelan comedian, became a social media hit in 2021 when he wrote that he thought he had Covid because the arepa he was eating had no taste. He joked that he then realized the restaurant was Colombian, which, as expected, provoked fiery responses.

“The Colombians roasted me and I honestly deserved it,” he later said.

One arepa stand — in Rotterdam, Netherlands, of all places — may provide the best illustration of the current arepa rankings.

Diego Mendoza, the owner, left Venezuela in 2015 for better opportunities thanks to his Spanish passport, which he had because his grandfather emigrated from Spain.

After working a corporate job in Barcelona, then in Poland and later in Rotterdam, Mr. Mendoza, 32, missed home and Venezuelan food. So he started making and selling arepas at weekly outdoor markets, slowly perfecting his family’s recipe.

“We are everywhere, but so are Colombians,” he said. “But because of all that we’re going through, the tragedy, we give much more importance to the arepa than Colombians.”

In May 2023, Mr. Mendoza opened his permanent spot, named Erikucha Arepera, at a large popular market in Rotterdam.

Because Colombia is easier to visit than Venezuela — and despite a Venezuelan flag displayed at his stand — he said many Dutch customers have referred to the arepas as Colombian because they recognize them from their travels. He then explains that arepas are also Venezuelan.

Mr. Mendoza, who has a tattoo on his arm of an arepa with the stars of the Venezuelan flag, isn’t bothered by the confusion, or the arepa rivalry. He doesn’t think something so yummy should divide. In fact, it should unite.

“The truth is it doesn’t matter if they’re Colombian or whatever,” he said. “What I know is that the arepa should belong to the world.”