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.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Middle East adviser, Massad Boulos, has enjoyed a reputation as a billionaire mogul at the helm of a business that bears his family name.

Mr. Boulos has been profiled as a tycoon by the world’s media, telling a reporter in October that his company is worth billions. Mr. Trump called him a “highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene.”

The president-elect even lavished what may be his highest praise: a “dealmaker.”

In fact, records show that Mr. Boulos has spent the past two decades selling trucks and heavy machinery in Nigeria for a company his father-in-law controls. He is chief executive of the company, SCOA Nigeria PLC, which made a profit of less than $66,000 last year, corporate filings show.

There is no indication in corporate documents that Mr. Boulos, a Lebanese-American whose son is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany, is a man of significant wealth as a result of his businesses. The truck dealership is valued at about $865,000 at its current share price. Mr. Boulos’s stake, according to securities filings, is worth $1.53.

As for Boulos Enterprises, the company that has been called his family business in The Financial Times and elsewhere, a company officer there said it is owned by an unrelated Boulos family.

Mr. Boulos will advise on one of the world’s most complicated and conflict-wracked regions — a region that Mr. Boulos said this week that he has not visited in years. The advisory position does not require Senate approval.

The confusion over Mr. Boulos’s background — and his failure for years to clear up misunderstandings until questioned this week by The Times — raises questions about how thoroughly Mr. Trump’s team vetted his nominees. The team was caught by surprise by allegations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth, the pick for defense secretary.

A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team declined to comment.

Mr. Boulos, a Christian from northern Lebanon who emigrated to Texas as a teenager, has risen in prominence since 2018, when his son Michael began dating Tiffany Trump.

This year, Massad Boulos helped Mr. Trump woo Arab-American voters, and in the fall served as a go-between for Mr. Trump and the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

In October, The Times asked him about his wealth and business dealings.

“Your company is described as a multibillion-dollar enterprise,” a reporter said. “Are you yourself a billionaire?”

Mr. Boulos said he did not like to describe himself that way, but that journalists had picked up on the label.

“It’s accurate to describe the company as a multibillion-dollar—?” the reporter followed up.

“Yeah,” Mr. Boulos replied. “It’s a big company. Long history.”

Versions of this history have been recounted in The New York Times, The Economist, CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

But in a subsequent interview on Tuesday, Mr. Boulos said that he had only meant to confirm that other news outlets had written — incorrectly — that he runs such a company.

In another call, on Wednesday, he said he was referring to his father-in-law’s companies, which he said were collectively worth more than $1 billion, though the company he runs is not.

“I’ve never really gone into any details like that about the value,” he said.

He confirmed that he has no relationship with Boulos Enterprises. Asked why he had never corrected the record, he said that he made a practice of not commenting on his business.

Mr. Boulos has a history of small business ventures. Corporate records in Nigeria tie him to a restaurant, some inactive construction companies and to Tantra Beverages, a now-defunct company that was set up to sell an “erotic drink” that “gives men and women the ultimate stimulating push,” according to its manufacturer.

Mr. Boulos said an associate runs the restaurant, and that he did not recall the drink venture. (After this article was published, Mr. Boulos said he did recall Tantra, and that it was part of an attempt to sell energy drinks that never got off the ground).

Any significant wealth, he said on Tuesday, comes from the family of his wife, Sarah Fadoul Boulos.

She is the daughter of Michel Zouhair Fadoul, a citizen of France and Burkina Faso who spent decades assembling a patchwork of logging, construction and automobile distribution companies throughout West and Central Africa.

The Times could find no indication, either in company documents or records from the corporate data provider Sayari, that Mr. Boulos has a direct stake in these businesses — other than the truck dealership.

An Origin Story

Massad Boulos met Sarah Fadoul through family in Lebanon and married young, she has said. Both studied in Texas, she has said in interviews on podcasts targeting the elite in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria.

Mr. Trump has referred to Mr. Boulos as a lawyer and ABC News has reported that he graduated with a law degree from the University of Houston. But the school said it has no record of that. Instead, he graduated from a separate school, the University of Houston-Downtown, in 1993 with a bachelor of business administration degree.

The couple had planned a move to New York, where she said he had been offered a job at a law firm. But her father intervened, she said, and invited the young couple to work for his business holdings in Africa.

In 1996 the couple moved to Lagos, where Ms. Fadoul Boulos said they became known as trust fund kids. “We were called the golden children,” she told the “Listed Lagosian” podcast.

Mr. Fadoul put the couple in charge of a truck and machinery dealership in Nigeria, Ms. Fadoul Boulos said. Corporate filings show the company has not grown much over the years.

Business was slow when a reporter visited its Lagos headquarters this month. A few dozen heavy machines and trucks sat in a lot by a highway, and a handful of staff sat behind desks inside the office. Mr. Boulos used to come in regularly, staff members said, but since July he had been in the United States campaigning for Mr. Trump.

SCOA’s branch in the Nigerian city of Kano closed four years ago because of lack of customers, a former employee, Kamal Ishaq, said Wednesday.

Ms. Fadoul Boulos has said that she worked alongside her husband for a time. But then, after an evangelical awakening, she said, God called her to dance. She set up the Society for the Performing Arts in Nigeria, where she calls herself the “visioneer.” The society teaches dance to young Nigerians, runs summer camps and puts on performances.

Ms. Fadoul Boulos frequently posts videos of herself on social media doing pirouettes and waving flags to worship music — including at her favorite Pentecostal church in Lagos, the House On The Rock, whose lead pastor gave a blessing at Tiffany Trump’s wedding in 2022.

Tiffany’s Million-Dollar Ring

Michael Boulos, the couple’s younger son, reportedly met Tiffany Trump at the actress Lindsay Lohan’s club in Greece in 2018, when he was about 22 and she 25.

Soon after their engagement, reports began to circulate describing Mr. Boulos as the son and heir of a billionaire. Massad Boulos said in an interview this week that Michael was an heir to the family business, but independently confirming its value was impossible.

The diamond ring that Michael Boulos gave Ms. Trump, with its reported $1 million price tag, seemed to confirm great wealth.

Michael Boulos was associate director of the truck dealership when they married, and has worked for a U.S. private equity firm and a yacht rental company, according to PitchBook.

In Nigeria, the most famous member of the Boulos family is Michael’s brother Fares, who used to perform reggae music on YouTube under the name Farastafari. Now he posts TikTok skits under the name Oyibo Rebel — oyibo means white person. His recurring characters include a caricature of a Black woman, Mama Thank God. He wears a large false bosom and a brightly colored cloth tied around his head, and mocks Nigerian women.

His LinkedIn page says he is also a director at the truck dealership.

A White House Introduction

In the October interview, Massad Boulos said that he first met Mr. Trump at a White House Christmas party in 2019.

“He was very, very warm, very welcoming,” Mr. Boulos said.

Mr. Boulos appeared on Mr. Trump’s behalf in Arabic-language media before the 2020 election. He played a more significant role in 2024 as an unofficial emissary to Arab American voters.

In Michigan, home to the largest-percentage Arab American population in the country, Mr. Boulos pitched Mr. Trump as the candidate best positioned to bring peace to the Middle East.

“He was a superstar,” said Yahya Basha, a Syrian-American doctor and political donor in Royal Oak, Mich. “People loved him.”

Mr. Trump carried the state, helped by heavily Arab-American precincts in the Detroit area.

Mr. Trump will take office at a time when the Middle East is as unstable as it’s been in decades. Israel remains at war with Hamas and Lebanon is devastated by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Syrian rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad, the longtime dictator.

What role Mr. Trump intends for Mr. Boulos is unclear.

In an interview, Mr. Boulos said that his White House responsibilities would involve “advising on the Middle East and Arab countries,” but declined to elaborate.

“The position is private,” he said. “It’s an adviser position.”

Enaibo Asiayei and Ismail Auwal contributed reporting from Warri and Kano, Nigeria.

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 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, earlier 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.”

The State Department said it was aware of an American found outside Damascus and was “seeking to provide support.”

Hisham al-Eid, the mayor of Al-Thihabiyeh, a poor, partly rural town east of Damascus, said 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 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.

“The guards treated me decently,” the man, wearing a beard and a gray hoodie, told the reporters. But he said that he heard others being tortured “daily.”

In another video posted by Al Arabiya, the man said 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.”

Richard Timmerman, who identified himself as Travis Timmerman’s great-uncle, said he was shocked to hear Travis — who he said had been working in Chicago before he went missing — had been found in Syria, and more so in a prison.

“The family had been looking for him, but no one’s been able to find anything about him,” Richard Timmerman said.

“He’s very responsible,” he added. “He’s not a criminal kind of person.”

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, speaking of Travis Timmerman, told reporters traveling with him in Jordan that “we’re working to bring him home.” He added that he “can’t give any details on exactly what’s going to happen.”

It was not immediately clear where the man had been held. The fall of the authoritarian Assad regime to rebel forces over the weekend 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, the State Department spokesman Matthew Miller signaled that the United States could legally communicate with designated terror groups “when it is in our interests.”

On Thursday, the department said the United States was still seeking to locate Tice, the American journalist, and any other Americans in the country who might need help.

This year, the Missouri State Highway Patrol put out a missing persons flier for a man named 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.

Mr. Timmerman’s mother, Stacey Collins Gardiner, told National Public Radio that after he went to Hungary they lost contact, though she learned he had gone to Lebanon. She said he had warned her that he would be in places that made communication difficult.

She said she wept with relief at the news that he had been found. When she sees him, “I will hug him,” she added. “And then I probably won’t let him go.”

The man identified as Mr. Timmerman told CBS News 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 if 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.”

Rachel Nostrant, Lynsey Chutel, Andrew Higgins, Ismaeel Naar, Euan Ward, Edward Wong and Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting.