The Taliban war hero scans the crowd, searching. From the back, he snatches a man with a flop of dusty hair and a face marred by shrapnel.

The man’s head is bowed, and he is missing an arm and an eye. Something has happened to him, something awful.

“This,” the Taliban commander says, shaking the man a bit too hard, “was the last ally of the Americans here.”

In this remote province, the commander carried out one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a pitched battle that sounded an early warning of a conflict terribly off course and altered the history of the war.

Now, years after the Americans abandoned this valley, and Afghanistan altogether, the commander jerks the man from the crowd to explain how the United States lost both.

Clutching the empty arm of his jacket, the commander spins him around like a marionette. The man’s sheared limb and ragged scars tell only half the story: His family was killed next to him, massacred as they fled the Taliban.

The downfall of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has humiliated his main backer, Russia, exposing the limits of the Kremlin’s military power and global influence.

Yet to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the loss of his closest Middle Eastern ally may only be a temporary setback in his quest for a much greater geopolitical prize: triumph in Ukraine.

Military and political analysts said winning the war in Ukraine has become an all-encompassing goal for Mr. Putin. That outcome, they said, would justify to the Russian leader the conflict’s tremendous human and economic losses, safeguard Russia’s statehood and global stature and compensate for strategic failures elsewhere, such as in Syria.

“Putin’s bet on the war in Ukraine is so high that a victory there would bring Russia a payout of historic proportions: It’s all or nothing,” wrote Aleksandr Baunov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, a research group. “If he thinks the fate of the world is being decided in the Donbas, then the future of Syria will be decided there as well.”

In the short term, as Moscow maneuvers to keep its military bases in Syria, Mr. Putin could intensify his costly offensive in Ukraine to recover some prestige. Pro-war Russian commentators have called on Mr. Putin to do just that, while also demanding tougher peace conditions in Ukraine to avoid the kind of inconclusive cease-fire that ultimately led to Mr. al-Assad’s downfall.

Both scenarios would complicate the incoming Trump administration’s promise to swiftly end the fighting in Ukraine.

As Mr. al-Assad’s regime crumbled, President-elect Donald J. Trump taunted Russia for its failure to save its ally and called on Mr. Putin to strike a deal on Ukraine, without explaining what it might look like.

Russia is “in a weakened state right now,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Sunday, “because of Ukraine and a bad economy.”

“I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act,” Mr. Trump added.

Analysts have pointed out that one of the most consistent features of Mr. Putin’s opaque 25-year rule is his aversion to acting from such obvious positions of weakness or submitting to external pressures.

Mr. Putin’s own descriptions of what a Russian victory in Ukraine would look like have always been vague. By last year, the Russian Army had abandoned its failed attempts to mount grand offensives that could topple the Ukrainian state. It has concentrated instead on Ukraine’s east, simultaneously pressuring Kyiv’s forces in multiple parts of the front and bombing Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure.

Military experts have interpreted this strategy as an attempt to exhaust Ukraine’s military and society, and force Kyiv to the negotiating table.

Mr. Putin has implied that any peace deal must allow Russia to keep at least the territory that it has already occupied, and guarantee Ukraine’s military neutrality, meaning no entry into NATO. Russia also wants to suppress Ukraine’s military capacity.

“We must not talk about a cease-fire for half an hour or half a year, so that they could resupply ammunition,” Mr. Putin said at a forum in southern Russia last month, referring to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government has repeatedly rejected any peace conditions that would formalize the loss of its territory or bar the country from seeking NATO membership.

In the short term, Moscow’s setback in Syria could shrink the room for compromise further.

Russia’s pro-war commentators have reacted to Mr. al-Assad’s downfall with bewilderment and anger, lamenting the lives of hundreds of Russian soldiers who died propping up a Syrian Army that melted away under a rebel assault.The demands of the war in Ukraine had reduced Russia’s ability to prevent the collapse.

On Sunday, one prominent Russian ultranationalist, Zakhar Prilepin, called Syria “our catastrophe.”

Many of these commentators said that Russia must learn from Mr. al-Assad’s mistakes.

“The conclusion is obvious: It’s best not to leave frozen conflicts,” said Oleg Tsaryov, a pro-Russian former Ukrainian lawmaker who now writes about the war from exile in Russia. “If a conflict is frozen, the enemy will undoubtedly exploit your moment of weakness,” he wrote in a written response to questions.

Mr. Tsaryov said that to protect its interests, Russia must force Ukraine to accept a peace deal that, among other things, bars the country from NATO membership and forces Ukraine to accept the loss of regions annexed by Russia.

“Contested territories are a cause for endless conflict,” he said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said recently that his country may accept a temporary loss of some occupied territory, but that it would never acquiesce to permanent border changes. Polls show that most Ukrainians support this view.

Some pro-war Russian commentators went further than Mr. Tsaryov, and called on the Russian military to respond to the embarrassment in Syria with even more brutality in Ukraine.

“This is precisely the time to show extreme toughness, and even cruelty” in Ukraine, Aleksei Pilko, an ultranationalist Russian historian, wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. He called for targeted killings of Ukrainian officials and more Russian airstrikes against Ukrainian government buildings and energy infrastructure.

Like Mr. Putin, the ultranationalist Russian commentators have offered few details about how a depleted Russian Army could achieve a Ukrainian capitulation that would satisfy their demands. But they are united in their calls for the army to step up its assaults.

Whether Mr. Putin listens to these or any other arguments is a different matter.

Vasily Kashin, a political scientist at Moscow’s state-run Higher School of Economics, has called the outpouring of nationalistic fervor following the Syria debacle “media noise.”

He said the Kremlin would continue prosecuting the war according to its plan, and was unlikely to be distracted by peripheral events that had little to no impact on the battlefield.

Mr. Putin has certainly long cultivated an image as a master strategist unperturbed by the ebb and flow of daily events. Still, the blow inflicted by Mr. al-Assad’s collapse to the Russian leader’s global reputation could yet compel him to make a show of strength in Ukraine, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political scientist at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“He may be tempted to show that Russia is not defeated, and that it knows what it is doing,” she said. “And that may lead him to doubt what he is willing to concede in Ukraine.”

To show strength, Mr. Putin could make new conditions for peace talks, or he could escalate airstrikes, following through on his frequent threats. A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive intelligence, said on Wednesday that Russia could hit Ukraine with another Oreshnik, a new and powerful ballistic missile, in the coming days.

The Ukrainian government has repeatedly said that Mr. Putin’s threats of escalation are a bluff, because the Russian military is already fighting at maximum capacity as its invasion nears its fourth year.

To some Russian analysts, the debate over Mr. Putin’s potential response to Mr. al-Assad’s downfall masks a more consequential lesson of Syria’s 13-year civil war: the difficulty of winning a protracted conflict.

The Russian military’s campaign to corral Mr. al-Assad’s enemies into enclaves proved ultimately futile, an illusion of victory that could yet resonate in Ukraine.

“In a modern world, a victory is only possible in a fast and short war,” Ruslan Pukhov, a prominent Russian military expert, wrote in a column about Syria for the Russian business newspaper Kommersant on Sunday. “If you can’t secure your success in a military-political sphere, then eventually you will lose, no matter what you do.”

Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, and Eric Schmitt contributed from Washington, D.C.

Lee Suyoon, a 20-year-old student, was at home just outside of Seoul on Dec. 3, sharing late-night fried chicken dinner with her mother when her phone started buzzing. A flurry of messages from her friends alerted her that martial law had been declared in South Korea and soldiers were breaking into the National Assembly.

Ms. Lee, who like others her age entered adulthood largely detached from politics, dismissed the notion that there could really be a military dictatorship, and she went to bed.

Everything changed the next day. As her Yonsei University classmates talked nonstop about what had happened, they shared videos of soldiers clashing with lawmakers, and news articles about military generals testifying before Parliament. After seeing that other campuses were galvanizing protesters, she felt compelled to act.

By Saturday, Ms. Lee had persuaded four friends to join her and tens of thousands of others to demand President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal outside the National Assembly, while a vote on an impeachment motion was underway inside.

“The martial law declaration has forced me to realize that democracy is important,” she said after the protest, and that it is also fragile.

Mr. Yoon’s attempt to suspend the country’s democracy has given rise to a new group of politically active South Koreans. They belong to a generation often criticized for its political apathy — one that hasn’t been exposed to the dark days of military rule before the late 1980s that the country’s older generation remembers all too well.

In the past week, the protest crowds have been younger than they often have been in recent years: People in their late teens and 20s joined people their parents’ and grandparents’ age, all spooked and angered by the president’s brazen action. They infused the street protests with energy, erupting in cheers when organizers blasted the latest pop songs. They waved their K-pop light sticks and made protest anthems go viral online.

Shin Yu-jin, 26, a landscape architect, was among the thousands of first-time demonstrators. She also had initially dismissed the martial law declaration. But seeing friends on Instagram who were out protesting that Saturday, she promptly set out to join them.

“It was my day off, and I didn’t have anything to do,” she said. “Yoon Suk Yeol made such a grave decision on his own to shake up the whole country for no valid reason, so I was furious.”

She was unprepared for the frigid temperatures: She only brought one hand warmer. But she was pleasantly surprised to see so many other women around her age.

As she watched some lawmakers leave the Assembly floor instead of voting, saving Mr. Yoon from impeachment, she said she cried, overcome by a sense of betrayal.

More experienced protesters in the past week noticed the demographic shift from the crowds that gathered eight years ago to demand the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye. While those were some of the largest demonstrations ever seen in South Korea, what’s at stake is different this time: democracy itself.

Choi Suk-hwan, 44, a volunteer leader at the protests in Seoul, said that he felt a kinship with those who were part of the pro-democracy struggle of the 1980s, an era from which he said much of South Korea’s protest culture originated. For him, the past week’s rallies were a chance for him to help pass on that tradition to younger people.

“Each generation teaches the next,” he said, after directing volunteers to hand out thousands of candles and fliers near City Hall.

Today’s teens and people in their 20s are contemporaries of the 250 students who died in the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014 and many of the nearly 160 people killed in the crowd crush in Itaewon around Halloween in 2022. Both tragedies might have galvanized them to join ensuing protests had they not been too young or too occupied with their studies to do so.

Instead, before last week, Ms. Lee and her university peers were wary of talking openly about politics. Neutrality was a virtue, so as not to start bitter arguments in a country where politics have become very polarized.

All that changed after six hours of martial law made her and her friends realize that the democracy hard-won by earlier generations was at risk. There was a consensus that it shouldn’t be allowed to happen again, she said.

Part of that consensus, she said, came from the fact that the country’s days of military rule had — until late last Tuesday — been consigned to the history books. The school curriculum includes lessons about the last time martial law was imposed, when paratroopers beat and killed as many as hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in the city of Gwangju in 1980.

Recent movies that depict the era of military rule — “A Taxi Driver,” “12.12: The Day,” “1987: When the Day Comes” — had helped teach her generation what her country had lived through before democracy.

President Yoon’s declaration of martial law was a traumatic echo, and Ms. Lee found herself glued to her phone, talking about the news with her friends in their group chat on KakaoTalk, a texting platform.

When news came last Thursday that a vote to impeach the president was scheduled for Saturday, she began planting seeds to convince her friends to attend a protest with her.

“This vote is happening on Saturday,” she recalled telling her friends. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

One of her classmates, Kwon Min-jae, 25, agreed and helped organize a group of five to go. She said that it was unlike him to be vocal about politics.

But the president’s declaration of martial law was a turning point for him and many of his peers to become more politically involved. Mr. Kwon said that his recent experience in the army, into which he was drafted like all South Korean men, had made him wary of the risks of letting the military run civilian life.

“Once you’re in that system, you have to follow orders, no matter what you think,” he said.

He convinced another classmate, Goh Hee-seung, 23, to join. Mr. Goh, who had voted for Mr. Yoon in the 2022 election, said that he was initially unsure about joining but decided he would regret staying on the sidelines.

“I thought it would be irresponsible not to go to a protest calling for the impeachment of a president I helped elect,” he said.

Mr. Goh said that attending the protest had given him a political identity crisis. After watching the lawmakers from the ruling People Power Party sit out the impeachment vote, he felt he could no longer support it.

“Something absurd has just happened, and something absurd is happening to back it,” he said.

Mr. Goh added that he would likely vote for a third-party candidate in the next election, repeating a common sentiment: Many people favor neither Mr. Yoon nor Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party who would be most likely to win if a presidential election were held now.

After news broke at around 9:30 p.m. that the impeachment effort on Saturday had failed, protesters began dispersing. The disappointed group of classmates huddled together, at a park near the National Assembly in the freezing cold, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Most agreed to go for drinks afterward and discuss their next move.

“After I finish a few exams,” Ms. Lee said, “I will continue to protest.”

At home and abroad, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is a man with plenty of fans. And not just any fans.

Mr. Milei, a right-wing libertarian, may not have been an obvious choice as the first world leader to meet President-elect Donald J. Trump after his election victory. Yet there he was, at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month, being showered with praise by Mr. Trump.

“The job you’ve done is incredible,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Milei at a gala for a right-wing research institute. “You’ve done a fantastic job in a very short period of time.”

Many Argentines seem to agree. A year after taking office, Mr. Milei is viewed favorably by about 56 percent of Argentines, according to a recent poll, making him one of the most popular presidents in the country’s recent history.

“This is the president that God brought for the Argentines,” said Marcelo Capobianco, 54, a butcher in Buenos Aires. “He brought back hope.”

While a cascade of brutal cuts to everything from soup kitchens to bus fare subsidies have pushed more than five million Argentines into poverty, they have also helped Mr. Milei make remarkable progress on a daunting task: reining in the world’s highest inflation rate.

Before Mr. Milei was sworn in, monthly inflation was 12.8 percent; now it is 2.4 percent, the lowest in four years.

Mr. Milei has followed through on bold promises to bring Argentina’s budget under control, firing more than 30,000 government workers and applying deep cuts to spending on health, welfare and education.

Before he took office, Mr. Milei’s critics questioned whether a former television pundit, who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist, could lift Argentina out of its decade-long crisis.

In some ways, their concerns have been borne out. Mr. Milei’s unorthodox governing approach has plunged Argentina into a chaotic new chapter, as poverty rates have jumped and people have taken to the streets in protest.

“Every day, we have more people who come to eat,” said Margarita Barrientos, 63, who runs a soup kitchen in a working-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

But there are also signs that Mr. Milei’s strategy is working. In addition to plunging inflation, government revenue exceeds spending for the first time in 16 years and preliminary data suggest that the economy, after contracting for three straight quarters, is stabilizing and may be on track to slowly start growing.

“Happy times are coming in Argentina,” Mr. Milei said this week during an address commemorating his first year in office. He promised “sustained growth” in 2025, vowing that the country’s sacrifice “will not be in vain.”

Global investors have cheered Mr. Milei’s actions, with Bank of America declaring in a financial report that his “stabilization plan is working better than expected.”

The International Monetary Fund predicted that Argentina’s yearly inflation would fall to a more manageable 45 percent in 2025 from a record peak of 211 percent in 2023 and commended Mr. Milei on his “impressive progress.”

Argentina’s inflation figures have sometimes been questioned after past administrations were caught fudging the numbers. But the national statistics agency was overhauled in 2015 so today the figures are widely seen as credible and hew to independent estimates.

For many ordinary Argentines, however, Mr. Milei’s economic triage has been painful. His government has cut state spending by about a third, eliminating price controls and subsidies that made public transit, heating bills and groceries cheaper, leaving more people struggling to make ends meet.

Still, many see a silver lining to the government’s austerity measures.

Miguel Valderrama, who owns a small market in Buenos Aires, said he’s relieved to no longer have to endure the unchecked inflation that defined daily life before Mr. Milei’s presidency.

“There was a price in the morning, and at noon everything increased again — and again two days later,” said Mr. Valderrama, 40, who voted for Mr. Milei.

Now, with greater stability, he is able to plan his inventory without worrying about sudden price shocks. “Before,” he said, “we didn’t know how much money we would spend, how much things would cost.”

Mr. Milei’s rise to power followed decades of boom-and-bust cycles. Argentina was among the world’s wealthiest countries, but years of government mismanagement emptied its public coffers, led to multiple defaults on tens of billions of dollars in international loans and left the economy limping.

“Argentina stopped growing in 2012,” said Marina Dal Poggetto, executive director of EcoGo, a consultancy based in Argentina.

Mr. Milei, casting himself as an outsider, blamed Argentina’s economic travails on corrupt politicians who spent recklessly, describing political opponents as “thieves” who live like “monarchs.”

He warned that if he were elected president things would most likely get worse before they got better. Still, his promises appealed to many Argentines hungry for change.

Mr. Milei’s more radical plans as a candidate included closing Argentina’s central bank and abandoning the peso in favor of the U.S. dollar. But once in power, he did neither, and his policies have been far less drastic than many expected.

“The initial outlines of Milei’s program were much more reasonable than his campaign rhetoric,” Ms. Dal Poggetto said. “They were pragmatic, very pragmatic.”

But Mr. Milei’s work to tackle the country’s long-running financial challenges has angered many Argentines, sparking large demonstrations over pension cuts, rising prices and slashed university budgets.

Roberto Bejerano, 68, a retired taxi driver, said he could afford only the bare essentials on his monthly pension payments and had to give up small pleasures like dining out and buying books.

“They’re laughing in our faces when they say we’re better off” because of the government’s tough economic medicine, Mr. Bejerano said. “You don’t see it in your wallet.”

He said it troubled him that Mr. Milei “is so popular when there are so many of us who are suffering.”

Outside Argentina, Mr. Milei’s economic policies and his outspoken style have elevated his international profile. He has mercilessly mocked “woke” ideology and attacked his critics on social media, dismissing them as “socialists.” His brash style and unruly hair often draw comparisons to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Milei, in fact, has frequently expressed admiration for Mr. Trump, cheering his “formidable electoral victory” on social media.

The feeling seems to be mutual. “You’re my favorite president,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Milei during a call last month, according to a spokesman for Argentina’s president. Two spokesmen for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Echoing Mr. Trump’s catchphrase, Mr. Milei has vowed to “Make Argentina Great Again.”

Elon Musk, who will help lead a new agency dedicated to reducing the size and spending of the U.S. government, has also lauded Mr. Milei. “Impressive progress in Argentina!” Mr. Musk said on X, sharing a lengthy podcast where Mr. Milei was a guest and boasted about his accomplishments.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who will help Mr. Musk lead the new agency, mused that “Milei-style cuts, on steroids” could offer “a reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government.”

But back home, Ms. Barrientos, the soup kitchen operator, said the Milei government had inflicted far too much suffering.

The country’s poverty rate rose to 53 percent from 40 percent in the first six months of the year, according to government figures.

“Right now it’s as if we don’t have a future,” said Ms. Barrientos, adding that the government was “insensitive to people’s needs.”

Many Argentines have cut back spending on basics like milk and bread. Consumption of beef in Argentina, one of the world’s top meat exporters, has fallen to its lowest level in 28 years.

Some analysts cautioned that Mr. Milei’s financial policies, including controls on foreign exchange rates, have helped prop up the peso but were making Argentina’s exports, like metals, soy and beef, less competitive.

Critics also warned that Mr. Milei’s aggressive cuts could ultimately stifle growth. Less investment in universities, research centers and hospitals could “weaken Argentina’s social and economic foundation in the long run,” said Martín Kalos, director of EPyCA Consultores, an economic consultancy.

Still, experts say Mr. Milei has succeeded in achieving the most pressing task: averting a deeper inflation spiral. And, for now, many Argentines appear to be willing to give Mr. Milei time to continue his sweeping economic overhaul.

“People feel there are certain things that had to be done,” said Mariel Fornoni a political analyst who runs Management and Fit, a polling firm. “Then, there’s the question of how much their wallets can take.”

Syria’s new authorities said on Thursday that an American citizen who had been imprisoned while Bashar al-Assad was in power had been found outside Damascus and handed over to the rebel group that now controls the capital.

In interviews with international news media, the man appeared to identify himself as Travis Timmerman, an American who is believed to have gone missing from Budapest, Hungary, this year. In a video aired on Thursday by the news channel Al Arabiya, someone is heard asking the man if his name is Travis Timmerman. The man says, “That’s right.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said that the man had been found on Thursday morning on a main road. He was barefoot and cold but otherwise seemed to be in good health, Mr. al-Eid said.

The man told reporters that he had entered Syria from Lebanon on a Christian pilgrimage, and had been detained for several months. He said he had received food and water while in detention, and was allowed to go to the bathroom three times a day.

In another video posted by Al Arabiya, the man, wearing a beard and a gray hooded top, said that he had been held in a cell alone. When asked how he was freed, he said that on Monday, someone “took a hammer and they broke my door down.”

It was not immediately clear where the man had been held. The fall of the authoritarian Assad regime over the weekend to rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has prompted the release of many prisoners held in a sprawling network of detention centers operated by the former government.

The group’s political affairs department said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. Timmerman had been released, and that they were ready to “cooperate directly” with U.S. officials to find other missing Americans inside the country. The group said this included the long-running quest to find the journalist Austin Tice, whose case has been the subject of intense diplomatic efforts since he disappeared near Damascus in 2012.

The United States has listed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist organization, potentially complicating joint efforts to locate and secure the release of American citizens previously held by the Assad regime. On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller signaled that the United States could legally communicate with designated terror groups “when it is in our interests.”

This year, the Missouri State Highway Patrol put out a missing persons flyer for Pete Timmerman, 29, saying he had last been located in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, on May 28. In August, the Hungarian police put out a call looking for “Travis Pete Timmerman” and shared photos of a man who resembles the one in the Al Arabiya interview.

The man told CBS News on Thursday that he had been in contact with his family three weeks ago, using a phone that he had while he was in prison. He said that he had left the prison where he had been held with a large group of people and that he had been trying to get to Jordan. It was unclear how he had arrived in the Syrian town where he was found.

Asked by reporters whether he had processed his newfound freedom, he said, “I still haven’t really thought about that,” CBS reported. “I’ve been more worried about finding a place to sleep each night since then.”

Lynsey Chutel, Andrew Higgins, Ismaeel Naar, Euan Ward and Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting.

Ukraine’s top general said on Thursday that his troops were facing “extremely fierce” fighting as Russian forces close in on the strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, and that “unconventional decisions” would have to be made to bolster Ukrainian defenses.

Although the commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, did not specify what kind of measures might be taken, his alarming statement underscored the deteriorating situation around Pokrovsk, a key rail and road hub for Ukraine’s army.

In an effort to flank Pokrovsk, Russian troops have pushed south of the city in recent days and are now less than three miles from its outskirts, according to battlefield maps based on satellite images and publicly available footage of the fighting. They are also steadily advancing through villages and settlements several dozen miles to the south, threatening to seize the last two Ukrainian strongholds in the southern part of the Donetsk region.

Moscow is advancing in Donetsk at its fastest pace since 2022, capturing hundreds of square miles each month as it leverages its overwhelming manpower advantage by breaking through Ukrainian positions weakened by troop shortages.

Analysts say the Kremlin is racing to secure as many territorial gains as possible before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office next month and starts to push for peace talks with terms that are likely to be shaped by each side’s status on the battlefield.

Emil Kastehelmi, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, said that from September to November, Russia had seized more than 600 square miles of Ukrainian territory, roughly twice the size of New York City, almost all of it in the Donetsk region.

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The European Union’s biggest economies are in turmoil. France’s government fell last week. Germany is facing a snap election after a fragile coalition collapsed. Financial markets are nervous and E.U. authorities are worried.

Amid the chaos, an unlikely haven of relative tranquillity has emerged in a country that was long considered among Europe’s most ungovernable: Italy.

The government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proved durable and stable, and the Italian economy has shown relative resilience. Many in Italy feel that Europe’s political tables have turned.

“Welcome to Italian chaos!” Matteo Renzi, a former prime minister of Italy, said in an interview.

“After being mocked for years for the instability of our governments,” he added, “we exported not only Parmesan, pasta and wine but also instability and coalition problems.”

It seems to be a propitious moment for Ms. Meloni, who has the political winds at her back as kindred right-wing forces gain momentum in other major countries in Europe, and now also in the United States with the election of Donald J. Trump.

At a time of uncertainty in France and Germany, her supporters hope that the combination of circumstances could bolster her position, and Italy’s, on the international stage.

“It’s a reversed trend,” said Lucio Malan, an Italian senator and the head of Ms. Meloni’s grouping in Italy’s Senate. “We have got stability, and this allows Italy to matter more.”

In Europe, Ms. Meloni has worked to dispel fears about her Brothers of Italy party’s post-fascist roots by aligning with her European partners on key issues such as support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. She has made herself a bridge between the political mainstream and the far right. Politico crowned her Europe’s most powerful person for 2025.

Her supporters anticipate that she might now play a similar role in mediating tensions between Europe and President-elect Trump, who has threatened a trade war and to pull American backing for NATO and for Ukraine.

Ms. Meloni met with Mr. Trump and Elon Musk in Paris on Saturday, after the reopening ceremony of Notre Dame cathedral.

Still, some political analysts are skeptical that Italy’s stability will translate into a larger leadership role in Europe. Ms. Meloni, they said, has not articulated a vision for Europe like other leaders, such as President Emmanuel Macron of France, have done.

Her strategy, they note, has been more defensive, about extracting resources from Brussels and protecting Italy’s interests and borders rather than about finding Pan-European solutions to common challenges. Some are not sure she even wants to.

“Italy is no longer a problem,” acknowledged Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy. But, he added, “No one’s looking to Italy for a vision on the future of Europe.”

Nonetheless, the situation is a highly unusual reversal of Europe’s traditional political patterns.

In Germany, political stability was long the norm. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel held power for 16 years — Italy changed 10 governments during that time. But Germany has now fallen victim to the same political fragmentation that has roiled much of the continent, driven by the emergence of hard-right factions.

In France, the nationalist party led by Marine Le Pen last week helped topple the shortest-lived government in the country’s modern history. That has brought political impasse in Paris and a wait for a record fourth government in a year.

Italy, plagued by unstable coalitions, was long seen as Europe’s troublesome teenage child trying to leech off the family credit card. All of a sudden it is less of a headache. Its government, in place for just over two years, is among the longest-lasting in the country’s history.

For decades, partly because of an electoral system that empowers small parties, government crises in Italy were so frequent that they were almost nonevents. The problem seemed so insurmountable that Mr. Renzi proposed a referendum to alter the Constitution hoping to bring more stability. He resigned after a crushing defeat.

Ms. Meloni has also promised a constitutional change that would entail direct election of the head of government. But for now, the coalition is holding up even without a legislative overhaul.

“It’s a government that showed that Italy is capable of having governments that last for longer than a year and a half,” said Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, an Italian former ambassador to Washington and a senator with Ms. Meloni’s party.

Ms. Meloni, who began her term in 2022, also relies on coalition partners. Her party has teamed up with the center-right Forza Italia founded by Silvio Berlusconi and with the anti-immigration League.

Despite their ideological differences, the parties seem, at least for now, to be sticking together. Ms. Meloni’s party earned nearly 30 percent of the vote at this year’s elections for the European Parliament, while her coalition parties each received about 9 percent.

“They are small parties that need to be in government with Giorgia Meloni because if they are not, they lose everything,” said Gianfranco Pasquino, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Bologna. “They can’t go anywhere else.”

It has also helped Ms. Meloni that a fragmented opposition split between the center-left Democratic Party and the populist Five Star Movement has failed to represent a substantial challenge, Mr. Pasquino said.

Italy’s economy, still plagued by a suffocating national debt, is growing, albeit slowly, helped by billions in E.U. recovery funds. Unemployment has dropped, and Ms. Meloni’s government has been cautious with spending, proposing rigorous budgets.

Lawmakers with Ms. Meloni’s party say that the stability has helped attract investments. In October, Microsoft announced its largest investment in Italy to date, and Amazon Web Services has announced plans to spend about $1.2 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure there.

Supporters say that Ms. Meloni has also become an influential figure on immigration, having played a significant role in helping the European Union make deals with Tunisia and Egypt to halt migrant departures.

Ms. Meloni has let go of her vitriol against the bloc, but she remains a nationalist who has repeatedly stated that her job in Brussels is to promote Italy’s interests.

At a time when the union faces major challenges on security, defense and competitiveness, Ms. Meloni has kept her focus on Italy’s role, experts say, rather than charting a broad vision for Europe.

That approach, analysts added, means that the trouble in France and Germany — rather than presenting an opportunity for Ms. Meloni — could instead empower other E.U. leaders, such as the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, or even Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who was president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.

“Everyone in Europe is happy that Meloni is swimming in the middle of the pack,” Mr. Rahman noted. “She is playing the game,” he said, “but I don’t think she is playing the same game.”

“It’s a lot more about Italy and a lot less about Europe,” he added.

In a surprise shift from remorse to defiance, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea on Thursday refused to step down and lashed out at those who sought to oust him over his short-lived decision to place his country under military rule.

Mr. Yoon has faced mounting pressure from all sides after his decision on Dec. 3 to declare martial law and send troops into the National Assembly. Tens of thousands of protesters have demanded his resignation, impeachment or arrest. His own party suggested that he resign early. The opposition has vowed to impeach him. The police are investigating possible insurrection charges against him.

Just last Saturday — the last time he addressed his country — Mr. Yoon had sounded contrite. In a televised speech, he had apologized for his martial law declaration and said that he would let his party decide how long he should stay in office. But on Thursday, he unexpectedly doubled down on his original stance, defending the decree as a bold move to “save the country” from what he called the “anti-state” opposition parties, which he accused of using a legislative majority to paralyze the nation.

“I will proudly confront it, whether it’s impeachment or investigation,” Mr. Yoon said. “I will fight to the end.”

Mr. Yoon’s speech on Thursday at least made his intentions clear: He would not be pressured to resign, and he would fight in court if he were to be impeached. But his refusal to leave office risked further incensing Koreans who, according to opinion polls, overwhelmingly disapproved of his martial law declaration and support impeachment.

After Mr. Yoon’s speech on Thursday, dozens of people showed up at Mr. Yoon’s residence in central Seoul, blowing vuvuzelas, beating drums and yelling, “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol!” The police held them back.

Mr. Yoon’s bold speech reflected his belief that he might have a fighting chance defending himself against impeachment in the country’s Constitutional Court, analysts said. His speech was also a battle cry aimed at his base of die-hard right-wing supporters, they said.

“No wonder why people call him a blind swordsman; he thinks he can overcome any challenge through his own bold initiative, no matter how crazy people may think it is,” said Ahn Byong-jin, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “He will launch a battle for public opinion ahead of a ruling at the Constitutional Court.”

Mr. Yoon’s refusal to go quietly may further deepen the country’s political polarization, analysts said.

Already, huge crowds of protesters gathered near the National Assembly calling for his removal last Saturday, when the legislature met to vote on his impeachment bill. Smaller but equally loud rallies of mostly older South Koreans took place in downtown Seoul, vowing to protect Mr. Yoon. The bill was blocked when Mr. Yoon’s party boycotted it, but the opposition plans to try to impeach him again on Saturday.

In his speech on Thursday, Mr. Yoon said his decision to declare martial law and send hundreds of troops into the National Assembly was a legitimate exercise of his constitutional powers and did not amount to insurrection, as the opposition has charged.

“His speech reads like a summary of the defense argument he would use at the Constitutional Court,” said Kim Min-seok, a member of the main opposition Democratic Party’s leadership council. “He was using it to incite the extreme right wing into commotion.”

Mr. Yoon’s speech also further widened a rift within his governing People Power Party. In return for saving him from impeachment last Saturday, the party has urged him to resign by March. That would mean a new presidential election in April or May, which the party argued was the swiftest way to end the political turmoil triggered by the martial law decree.

Six of the 108 lawmakers in Mr. Yoon’s party have said they would vote for impeachment. The opposition needs just three more deserters from the party to pass the bill.

Han Dong-hoon, the chairman of Mr. Yoon’s party, who had earlier called for Mr. Yoon’s early resignation, said after the president’s speech that he now supported impeachment. “He was not repenting but justifying” his martial law, said Mr. Han, who is not a lawmaker. “Our people will never tolerate his speech, and it cannot be tolerated under democratic norms.”

But Kwon Seong-dong, a Yoon ally who was elected as the party’s floor leader on Thursday, said its stance of opposing impeachment had not changed. The meeting at which Mr. Kwon was elected turned into a shouting match between Mr. Han and party members loyal to Mr. Yoon.

Mr. Yoon also faces the possibility of arrest, as prosecutors and the police investigate whether he had committed insurrection — a crime that carries the death penalty or life imprisonment for those who are deemed ringleaders. He has been barred from leaving the country while the investigation continues. The Assembly on Thursday impeached the national police chief and the justice minister for their roles in Mr. Yoon’s martial law.

Opposition lawmakers say Mr. Yoon sent troops to the National Assembly after declaring martial law in order to stop them from voting to reverse the decree, which the Constitution empowers the legislature to do.

He said he had deployed the thousands of police officers and hundreds of Special Forces troops only to maintain order, expecting that protesters would gather outside the legislature. He denounced the opposition’s accusation as “a false instigation.”

In his speech, Mr. Yoon cited a litany of complaints against opposition lawmakers as justification for his actions. He accused them of slashing his budgets for reinvigorating South Korea’s nuclear power industry and investigating drug traffickers, foreign spies and other criminals. He also criticized them for trying to impeach officials in his government and organizing frequent protest rallies, which he said were meant to push him out of office.

“They have become a monster that ruins the free democratic constitutional order of South Korea,” he said. “I had to do something.”

Mr. Yoon’s claim that he had not intended to stop lawmakers from voting against martial law contradicts testimony given by military officers in recent days.

In a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday, Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-geun, who commanded the Special Forces troops sent to the National Assembly, said that Mr. Yoon had called him personally during the operation, ordering him to have soldiers “break the door down right now, get in there and drag out the people inside” so that there would not be enough lawmakers to vote against martial law.

The troops broke into the main National Assembly building, where the lawmakers were gathering, but they were held off by parliamentary staff members and angry citizens. They retreated after the lawmakers unanimously voted against martial law, forcing Mr. Yoon to withdraw it. It lasted only six hours.

Although many governing party lawmakers criticized Mr. Yoon’s martial law declaration, they have been reluctant to impeach their own president, wary of the backlash such a move might draw among the party’s supporters. After dozens of governing party lawmakers joined the opposition to impeach President Park Geun-hye in 2016 on charges of corruption and abuse of power, they were branded as traitors in their conservative constituencies.

“It has been such a trauma for them,” said Sung Deuk Hahm, a professor of political science at Kyonggi University, west of Seoul. “But the crime President Yoon is accused of — insurrection — is of a different scale than Park Geun-hye’s crimes. The sooner they accept this, the sooner he will be impeached.”