It took an attacker just three minutes to kill five people and wound hundreds by ramming an S.U.V. into a crowded holiday market on Friday night, stunning Germany and shattering the peace of its Christmas season.

By about 7 p.m. on Friday, the market, in the eastern city of Magdeburg, was packed with families and friends who had gathered under the glow of twinkling lights to celebrate the last workday before the holiday week.

Instead, the weekend began with horror. The attacker, described by officials as a 50-year-old Saudi doctor who had been living in Germany for nearly two decades, slowly maneuvered a rented car through a gap in the security barriers designed for emergency vehicles, then steered for the heart of the celebration at the old market square.

He accelerated, trying to hurt as many people as possible, the police said.

After maiming hundreds, he aimed to escape through a gap on the other end of the square, but was stopped by traffic. Police officers swiftly surrounded the vehicle, forcing the driver to the ground as they apprehended him.

Among the five victims were a 9-year-old child and four adults. More than 200 others were wounded, 41 of them with injuries so severe that the authorities have warned that the death toll could rise in the coming days. There were so many wounded that some had to be flown to hospitals in other states.

The local Magdeburg authorities, who spoke at news conference on Saturday in City Hall, identified the attacker only as Taleb A., in keeping with Germany’s privacy laws, and said his motive was being investigated.

The attacker, who officials said first came to Germany in 2006, is being held while the authorities investigate him for five counts of murder and more than 200 counts of attempted murder.

Officials said the suspect lived in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg, and the police searched an apartment in that town late Friday. A clinic confirmed to local news media that the doctor worked as a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy at their hospital, two German news outlets reported.

The doctor had an active social media presence that included posts criticizing Germany for what he called the authorities’ tolerance of radical Islam, German news media reported. A security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that those reports were accurate.

In his social media, the man also expressed support for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party, and reposted comments by the group’s leaders warning of the threat of Islamic law being imposed in Germany.

Video from just after the attack showed a man with a trim beard and round, wire-rimmed glasses lying prone on the ground beside a BMW with a crumpled front fender and grille, as officers pointed pistols at him and shouted at him not to move.

Local officials said they believed that the driver acted alone.

But in Magdeburg and around the country, the attack smashed the peace and tranquillity many had sought at a turbulent moment for Germany, which faces a grueling winter campaign for snap elections in February after the government’s collapse this week.

Henriette Winkler, 36, who had visited the market just hours before the attack, was one of many Magdeburg residents who had been looking forward to a quiet Christmas. “Now I almost don’t feel like Christmas anymore,” she said.

Germans had started the weekend eager to celebrate the start of the holiday season after a year marked by concerns over the stagnant economy, increasing job cuts and political paralysis that culminated in the chancellor losing a confidence vote in Parliament.

“There is no place more peaceful and joyful than a Christmas market,” said Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who visited the market on Saturday morning. “What a horrific act it is to hurt and kill so many people there with such brutality!”

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Ronni Krug, a member of the Magdeburg City Council, defended the security at the market as sufficient, saying that the emergency routes exploited by the attacker were necessary to allow ambulances through and were guarded by the police.

The security — which includes large concrete blocks and police officers — was beefed up this year in response to a knife attack last summer that left three people dead and a dozen wounded.

After that attack, at a street festival in western Germany, knives were banned at holiday markets across the country and security was increased for holiday festivals in Magdeburg and elsewhere.

In 2016, an Islamic extremist rammed a truck into a crowd at a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 13. Since then, bollards blocking the entrances to street festivals and holiday markets in Germany have become standard, as have security cameras and an increased police presence, including plainclothes officers circulating among the crowds.

A line of large concrete blocks painted red and green had been placed at the perimeter of the Magdeburg Christmas market, which was set up in narrow streets holding wooden stalls decorated with twinkling lights and selling hot mulled wine, sausages and gifts.

After Friday’s attack, cities across Germany sent extra patrols to the thousands of Christmas markets that remained open on Saturday. In Cologne, the authorities banned suitcases and larger bags at the market around the city’s cathedral. In Leipzig, the police set up extra barriers at the entrances to the market.

“We will need to speak about security, but not today,” Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt state, told reporters on Saturday. “Today we are mourning.”

Germany needs to have an “intense discussion” about what it would take to “give citizens the feeling that in Germany, we not only have secure Christmas markets, but that we are able to live our lives how we want to,” Mr. Haseloff said.

Magdeburg, which is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt and has a population of about 240,000, was part of Communist East Germany. The annual market is set up in the center of the city, in front of City Hall. On Saturday, people came to lay flowers at a memorial set up on the steps of the Johanniskirche, or St. John’s Church, near the attack site.

The pile of flowers at the steps of the church grew throughout the day on Saturday as visibly shaken people stopped to pay their respects and mourn.

Marko Heyer, 49, of Magdeburg, came with his wife to the church, both of them fighting back tears. Mr. Heyer recalled visiting the market — with its fairy-tale section with figures that recounted stories to children, as well as with the usual stands selling food and gifts — when he was a boy.

“In my opinion, it was the nicest Christmas market in Germany,” he said. “It will never be the same again.”

Surveillance footage circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times on Friday shows a car crashing into a large crowd at the market shortly after 7 p.m. The car then turns right onto another crowded street. Video of the aftermath shows people helping the wounded as cries can be heard.

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered inside and around Magdeburg’s Gothic cathedral for a ceremony to mourn the victims. Several hundred people also demonstrated, many chanting “deport, deport,” at a square nearby.

Inside the cathedral Mr. Scholz, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and other dignitaries, as well emergency workers and mourners, listened to a Lutheran bishop, Friedrich Kramer, try to make sense of the tragedy.

“The brutal attack yesterday evening leaves us sad and angry, helpless and fearful, uncertain and desperate, speechless and stunned and deeply affected,” he said. “The Christmas market as a place of peace has been destroyed.”

As rebels advanced toward the Syrian capital of Damascus on Dec. 7, the staff in the hilltop Presidential Palace prepared for a speech they hoped would lead to a peaceful end to the 13-year civil war.

Aides to President Bashar al-Assad were brainstorming messaging ideas. A film crew had set up cameras and lights nearby. Syria’s state-run television station was ready to broadcast the finished product: an address by Mr. al-Assad announcing a plan to share power with members of the political opposition, according to three people who were involved in the preparation.

Working from the palace, Mr. al-Assad, who had wielded fear and force to maintain his authoritarian rule over Syria for more than two decades, had betrayed no sense of alarm to his staff, according to a palace insider whose office was near the president’s.

The capital’s defenses had been bolstered, Mr. al-Assad’s aides were told, including by the powerful 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, led by the president’s brother Maher al-Assad, the insider said.

They had all been deceived.

After dusk, the president slipped out of the capital, flying covertly to a Russian military base in northern Syria and then on a Russian jet to Moscow, according to six Middle Eastern government and security officials.

Maher al-Assad fled separately that evening with other senior military officers across the desert to Iraq, according to two Iraqi officials. His current location remains unknown.

Bashar al-Assad left his country so secretively that some of his aides remained in the palace hours after he had left, waiting for a speech that never came, the insider said. After midnight, word came that the president was gone, and they fled in a panic, leaving the palace gates wide open for the rebels who would storm in a few hours later.

Mr. al-Assad’s fall brought to a sudden end his family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on Syria, causing jubilation among his victims and enemies, scrambling the strategic map of the Middle East and setting Syria off on a new, uncertain trajectory.

During his final days in power, Mr. al-Assad pleaded for foreign military help from Russia, Iran and Iraq to no avail as his military’s own intelligence service documented his forces’ collapse in real time, according to secret reports reviewed by The New York Times.

Diplomats from a half-dozen countries sought ways to push him from power peacefully in order to spare the ancient city of Damascus a bloody battle for control, according to four regional officials involved in the talks. One proposal, an official said, was that he pass power to his military chief, effectively submitting to a coup.

The account of Mr. al-Assad’s fall, much of which has not been previously reported, is based on interviews with Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish officials; Damascus-based diplomats; as well as associates of Mr. al-Assad and rebels who participated in his ouster. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocols or fear of retribution from remnants of the former regime — or from the rebels who toppled it.

Now, rebels guard the Presidential Palace. Mr. al-Assad’s home has been picked clean by looters. And Syrians who remained loyal to him through years of civil war fume that he left without a word, abandoning them to their fates.

“For your own personal safety, you sacrificed all your people?” said the palace insider, who barely escaped before the rebels arrived.

Hiding from Syria’s new masters far from Damascus, he was still struggling to come to grips with Mr. al-Assad’s sudden flight.

“It is a betrayal that I cannot believe,” he said.

As Aleppo Fell, ‘Life Was Normal’

In late November, when rebels from Syria’s northwest launched an offensive aimed at pushing back Mr. al-Assad’s forces, the president was a continent away for a joyous family occasion. His elder son, Hafez al-Assad, was defending his doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University.

Gathered in a cavernous, wood-paneled auditorium on a hill overlooking the Russian capital were Mr. al-Assad’s wife, Asma al-Assad, and two of Hafez’s grandparents.

The 98-page dissertation — “Arithmetic Questions of Polynomials in Algebraic Number Fields” — was unlikely to attract a wide readership. But it bore a unique dedication: “To the martyrs of the Syrian Arab Army, without whose selfless sacrifices none of us would exist.”

Bashar al-Assad was in Moscow, too, though he did not attend the defense. Back at home, the army his son had lauded as heroic was crumbling before the rebel advance.

For 13 years, Mr. al-Assad had been fighting a brutal civil war against armed groups seeking his ouster. The conflict had ravaged the country, killing more than a half-million people and creating millions of refugees. Iran and its ally, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, had supported his troops, and Russia sent fighter jets whose air raids devastated rebel communities.

Around 2020, the war appeared to settle into a stalemate. Syria’s economy was trashed, and much of its territory was out of Mr. al-Assad’s hands. Still, he remained in power and was working of late to shed his status as an international pariah.

“Life was normal, and everyone was looking to the future,” recalled the palace insider, who worked down the hall from Mr. al-Assad for many years.

On Nov. 30, a rebel coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group with roots in Al Qaeda, seized the northern city of Aleppo, a major economic hub, shocking people across the Middle East. Mr. al-Assad rushed back to Damascus and found his staff uneasy, the palace insider recalled, although no one thought the capital was vulnerable.

Aware that his army had been ground down by years of battle, Mr. al-Assad sought help from the foreign powers that had helped him before.

In Tehran, senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps held emergency meetings to explore ways to aid Mr. al-Assad, according to three Iranian officials, including two members of the Revolutionary Guards. Two days after Aleppo fell, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, traveled there, publicly reinforcing that Damascus was stable. Television cameras filmed him posing for photographs with families on the street and eating at a popular shawarma restaurant with his Syrian counterpart. He vowed to the Iranian news media that Iran would stand with Mr. al-Assad to the end.

Iran’s options were limited.

Throughout the Syrian war, Iran had provided great military aid to help Mr. al-Assad, sending its own commanders and fighters from the Revolutionary Guards, as well as commandos from Hezbollah and fighters from many other countries. But Hezbollah had just emerged from its own war, with Israel, badly battered. Israel had killed or wounded thousands of its fighters, destroyed many of its munitions and killed most of its top leaders. Israel had also threatened Iranian aircraft going to Syria and any mobilization of ground forces there, leaving Iran no practical way to support Mr. al-Assad.

Mr. Araghchi told state media that he found Mr. al-Assad confused and angry that his army had failed to hold Aleppo, saying that the Syrian president “did not have an accurate read of the situation.” Mr. al-Assad told him in private, according to two Iranian officials, that his generals had described his forces’ withdrawal as a tactical move to shore up the defense of Damascus.

Mr. al-Assad’s other key champion was President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Russia maintained a military base in northern Syria and a naval base on the Mediterranean coast in Tartus that allowed Mr. Putin to project power far from Moscow.

Mr. Putin came to Mr. al-Assad’s rescue during the Syrian war in 2015, the Russian military overwhelming the rebels. He tried to broker a reconciliation between Mr. al-Assad and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who had long supported the rebels, but the effort never progressed.

In the first days of the rebels’ advance after Aleppo fell, Mr. al-Assad felt a sudden chill in his relationship with Mr. Putin, the palace insider and a Turkish official said: The Russian leader stopped taking his calls.

‘No Plan to Fight’

After taking Aleppo, the rebels continued south and seized the Assad stronghold of Hama, in another sudden shock to the regime.

The rebels’ swift march revealed the deep rot inside Mr. al-Assad’s army. Economic distress and punishing sanctions had hollowed out Syria’s currency, reducing soldiers’ salaries to less than $30 per month. So many had been killed that the army relied heavily on conscripts, who were poorly fed and equipped with outdated gear.

The rebels, too, mostly carried light arms. But they had one great advantage, drones, which they used to strike command centers, scattering regime soldiers. Syrian military intelligence reports, which were reviewed by The Times, described relentless drone attacks across the country that Mr. al-Assad’s forces had no way to counter. Many of the drones took off from a field in rebel-held Idlib Province in the northwest, next to a warehouse that housed at least 200 of them, one report read.

In Tehran, military commanders told the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that the rebels were advancing too fast for Iran to help, according to four Iranian officials.

Shocked, Mr. Khamenei sent a senior adviser, Ali Larijani, on a secret trip to Damascus to tell Mr. al-Assad to buy time by promising political overhauls and a new government that would include members of the opposition, according to four Iranian officials. Mr. Larijani also discussed the topic of defection, raising the possibility of Tehran or Moscow.

Realizing that Russia would not save him and that Iran could not, Mr. al-Assad sent his foreign minister to Baghdad. He told the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, that Mr. al-Assad’s fall would endanger Iraq, according to three regional officials with knowledge of the talks. He pleaded for Iraqi military support, but the country’s top leaders — the prime minister, the president and the speaker of Parliament — all refused.

In public, Iranian officials called for a diplomatic solution. But officials in Tehran had concluded that Mr. al-Assad would not survive, according to six Iranian officials, and Iran began quietly withdrawing its diplomatic and military staff from Damascus.

“They told us that the rebels will arrive in Damascus by Saturday and there is no plan to fight,” read an internal Revolutionary Guards memo viewed by The Times. “The people of Syria and the army are not up for another war. It’s over.”

‘No One Knew Anything’

Panic gripped Damascus as the sun rose on Dec. 7. Overnight, the rebels had advanced toward Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and the last major urban center standing between the rebels and the capital.

Residents rushed to stores to stock up on food in case street battles trapped them at home. Others fueled up their cars and fled the city.

Inside the army, it was becoming clear that Mr. al-Assad’s forces were failing, according to dozens of military intelligence reports on Dec. 6 and 7, which were reviewed by The Times.

The forces were overwhelmed, they said. Rebels disguised in army uniforms were approaching Homs in cars adorned with portraits of Mr. al-Assad, and other armed groups had seized army checkpoints in Daraa, south of Damascus. One memo said that soldiers had left behind armored vehicles and weapons that the rebels had claimed.

“They are planning to control the entire southern region and then head to the capital,” another report said. “This will happen within a few hours.”

The sense of alarm had not reached the Presidential Palace, the insider recalled. Mr. al-Assad and his staff were in their offices, trying to manage a crisis whose gravity they did not comprehend.

“People were still drawing up scenarios,” he said, “and the idea of Damascus falling was not suggested by anyone.”

Palace staff spent the day waiting for the speech that Mr. al-Assad was supposed to record, hoping that it would somehow stop the rebel advance.

“There were lots of people in the palace who said that it was time for him to appear, to support the Army, to reassure people,” the insider said.

But the filming kept getting postponed without explanation. By dusk, the staff was no longer sure where Mr. al-Assad was, the insider said.

On the other side of the Middle East, in Doha, Qatar, many of the region’s power brokers had gathered to try to find a way to stop the situation in Syria from escalating further. Many of the countries represented hated Mr. al-Assad but had come to accept that he had survived the war, and they did not trust that the rebels could hold Syria together.

Among the assembled officials, from five Arab countries plus Turkey, Russia and Iran, there were many who had concluded that it was too late for Mr. al-Assad, according to three officials from different countries who attended.

That evening, the rebels entered Homs, exacerbating fears that Damascus was next.

“After Homs fell, everything got very tense and no one knew anything, not in the palace or outside the palace,” the insider said.

‘Burn Everything’

While Mr. al-Assad had his pick of palaces to use for official business, he lived with his wife and three children in a four-story modernist villa surrounded by palm trees and fountains in the upscale Damascus neighborhood of al-Maliki.

After he was gone, his neighbors said that living near him had been a nuisance. Soldiers blocked access to the street and interrogated visitors, they said. Installing a new satellite dish or air-conditioner required complicated dealings with the intelligence service.

But at least Mr. al-Assad and his family were quiet — which is why the neighbors jumped when they heard his guards screaming hours before dawn on Dec. 8.

“‘Guys, flee, flee! They’re coming!’” one neighbor recalled them yelling. “‘May God curse him. He left us!’”

Chaos also gripped an Air Force intelligence branch elsewhere in the city, according to a soldier who gave only his first name, Mohammed, for fear of retribution from the rebels. As the rebels approached, orders came to defend the capital, he said. But on their phones, the soldiers saw images of their comrades elsewhere taking off their uniforms and running away.

After night fell, their orders changed.

“Burn everything: documents, files and hard disks,” Mohammed recalled being told. “At this moment, I and my colleagues all felt that the regime was falling.”

He, too, changed into civilian clothes and walked out of the base, he said.

Inside the palace, the hours ticked by as Mr. al-Assad’s aides waited for the speech, the insider recalled.

“The idea that he had fled never came to mind,” he said.

After midnight, they received a call telling them that the president had escaped, he said. Then the head of security for the area called to say that the guards were gone and that he was leaving, too.

Terror set in, the insider said, and he ran to his car, finding the palace empty and its gates open. He rushed into hiding, he said, concluding as he drove that there had never actually been a plan for a speech. It had, he believed, been a ploy to distract Mr. al-Assad’s staff while the president sneaked away.

“He tricked us,” the insider said. “Does he still have any popularity among his people? No. To the contrary. He betrayed us.”

North of Damascus, Bilal Shahadi, 26, was among thousands of prisoners held in the Sednaya prison, a lockup so brutal that Amnesty International called it a “human slaughterhouse.”

During his two years there, Mr. Shahadi’s days began with guards shouting, “Animals, come!” so that the inmates would call out their prisoner numbers one by one — a grim roll call to see if anyone had died overnight.

Before dawn on Dec. 8, he awoke to jostling in his crowded cell and the sounds of voices outside yelling, “God is Great!”

He made his way to the door and, to his surprise, pushed it open and walked out.

A prison guard, he said, had opened one cell and fled, leaving the keys behind. The first prisoners to get out unlocked the other cells.

Mr. Shahadi tore through the prison. In a guards’ office, he said, he found a poster of Mr. al-Assad, which he set on fire with a cigarette lighter. He set off on foot with thousands of others, cheering and crying as they walked home.

“It was a dream,” he recalled. “All of it felt like a dream.”

Anton Troianovski contributed reporting from Berlin, Jacob Roubai from Beirut and Falih Hassan from Baghdad.

Government offices in Iran are closed or operating at reduced hours. Schools and colleges have moved to online only. Highways and shopping malls have descended into darkness, and industrial plants have been denied power, bringing manufacturing to a near halt.

Although Iran has one of the biggest supplies of natural gas and crude oil in the world, it is in a full-blown energy crisis that can be attributed to years of sanctions, mismanagement, aging infrastructure, wasteful consumption — and targeted attacks by Israel.

“We are facing very dire imbalances in gas, electricity, energy, water, money and environment,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian in a live televised address to the nation this month. “All of them are at a level that could turn into a crisis.”

While Iran has been struggling with issues with its infrastructure for years, the president warned that the problem had reached a critical point.

For most of last week, the country was virtually shut down to save energy. As ordinary Iranians fumed and industrial leaders warned that the accompanying losses amounted to tens of billions of dollars, Mr. Pezeshkian could offer no solution other than to say he was sorry.

“We must apologize to the people that we are in a situation where they have to bear the brunt,” Mr. Pezeshkian said. “God willing, next year we will try for this not to happen.”

Officials have said the deficit in the amount of gas the country needs to function amounts to about 350 million cubic meters a day, and as temperatures have plunged and demand has spiked, officials have had to resort to extreme measures to ration gas.

The government faced two stark choices. It either had to cut gas service to residential homes or shut down the supply to power plants that generated electricity.

It chose the latter, as turning gas off to residential units would come with serious safety hazards and would cut off the primary source of heat for most Iranians.

“The policy of the government is to prevent at all costs cutting gas and heat to homes,” Seyed Hamid Hosseini, a member of the Chamber of Commerce’s energy committee, said in telephone interview. “They are scrambling to manage the crisis and contain the damage because this is like a powder keg that can explode and create unrest across the country.”

By Friday, 17 power plants had been completely taken off line and the rest were only partially operational.

Tavanir, the state power company, warned producers of everything from steel to glass to food products to medicine that they needed to brace for widespread power cuts that could last days or weeks. The news has sent both state-controlled and private industries into a tailspin.

Mehdi Bostanchi, the head of the country’s Coordination Council of Industries, a nationwide body that acts as a liaison between industries and the government, said in an interview from Tehran that the situation was catastrophic and unlike anything industries had ever experienced.

He estimated that losses from just this past week could reduce manufacturing in Iran by at least 30 percent to 50 percent and amount to tens of billions of dollars in losses. He said that while no enterprise had been spared, smaller and medium factories were hit the hardest.

“Naturally, the damages from the widespread and abrupt power outage that has lasted all week will be extremely serious for industries,” Mr. Bostanchi said.

The energy crisis has hit Iran at a particularly difficult geopolitical time.

Iran’s regional status as a power player has been severely diminished following the collapse of the al-Assad government in Syria and Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The return of President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to bring maximum pressure on the regime, with policies that will further squeeze the economy.

The country’s currency, the rial, has also been in free fall this week, plunging to its lowest rate ever against the dollar.

All this has left the government vulnerable as it scrambles to contain each crisis.

A lesser-known factor has exacerbated the energy crisis this year: In February Israel blew up two gas pipelines in Iran as part of its covert war with the country. As a result, the government quietly tapped into emergency gas reserves to avoid service disruption to millions of people, according to an official from the oil ministry and Mr. Hosseini, the member of the Chamber of Commerce’s energy committee.

Mr. Pezeshkian, elected president in July, has said that his government inherited a depleted energy store that it has not been able to replenish.

Natural gas accounts for about 70 percent of Iran’s sources of energy, a rate much higher than those in the United States and Europe, according to international energy studies. The government implemented an ambitious project of taking gas to all corners of Iran, including small villages, and now about 90 percent of Iranian homes rely on gas for heat and cooking.

Analysts attributed the current crisis to a host of problems, including an ailing infrastructure across the entire production and supply chain. Because of sanctions, Iran has found it difficult to attract foreign investments to expand and modernize its energy sector, analysts said. Mismanagement, corruption and cheap prices that fuel wasteful consumption are among other factors.

“All across the chain you basically see challenges where Iran is not able to produce as much electricity as it needs, and at the same time it is not able to reduce its consumption,” said Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, chief executive of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation, a London-based economic think tank that tracks Iran’s economy. “It’s very difficult to keep this going.”

Iran began enforcing two-hour scheduled daily power cuts to residential homes in November, but that did not suffice. The power cuts now happen more randomly and last longer. For two days last week, schools, universities, banks and government offices were shut down with a day’s notice in all but three of Iran’s 31 provinces to save energy.

By Thursday, the government said all schools and higher education would move online, a measure not taken since the pandemic, for the remainder of the semester, which runs for about three more weeks. Then, on Friday, the governor of Tehran said schools there would be open on Saturday because of final exams.

Government offices will be working at reduced hours, ending work at 2 p.m. until further notice to reduce energy consumption.

Saeed Tavakoli, the head of the state gas company, said the gas service to some 73,000 housing units was cut off after agents, knocking door to door, identified them as second vacation homes in the mountains near Tehran and the shores of the Caspian Sea in the north.

Ordinary Iranians are waking up every day not knowing if they will be able to go to work or send their children to school, or if the elevators or traffic lights will function.

“The power outage has severely affected daily life and work. When the power goes out, the water is also cut off and the boilers are turned off, and, as a result, all the heating devices are out of order,” said Sephideh, a 32-year-old teacher in Tehran, who said her online English classes are routinely canceled because internet goes out. She asked that only her first name be used, out of fear of retribution from authorities.

Nader, a dentist who also requested only to be identified by his first name, said he sometimes had to stop work on patients’ mouths midway because of power cuts.

The owner of one of the largest manufacturing plants for construction material said in an interview from Tehran that his business had survived revolution, war and sanctions but that none of those things had been as chaotic and stressful as events of the past week. He said an overwhelming sense of uncertainty was spreading among the private sector, with the country slipping into uncharted territory with crisis after crisis that the government seemed unable to control.

Soheil, a 37-year-old engineer at a household appliance production factory in Isfahan, said the power cuts would force the factory to lay off workers and downsize because power cuts had already led to higher production costs.

Mr. Pezeshkian has started a video campaign of officials and celebrities urging Iranians to reduce energy consumption by lowering the temperature of their homes at least two degrees. Videos on state media showed the presidential compound with no lights at night.

Justin Trudeau’s career is the stuff of 21st-century political drama, with an arc that has taken him from glamorous liberal standard-bearer to the butt of jokes by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his acolytes.

He burst onto the international scene in 2015, a newly elected young leader of Canada whose father had also once been a popular prime minister.

And he spent the next decade building a brand around being a feminist, an environmentalist, a refugee and Indigenous rights advocate, pursuing the same message of change and hope as Barack Obama.

While he drew fawning reviews in the news media — including over his poster boy looks — his honeymoon with Canadians really lasted only about two years; by 2017, a series of controversies had already tarnished his picture-perfect image.

His party went on to lose the popular vote in two elections, in 2019 and 2021, requiring him to form minority governments propped up by a left-wing opposition party. That support, too, has now evaporated.

Today, Mr. Trudeau finds himself — like other Western leaders — facing an angry constituency and losing control.

He will soon either call elections that he’ll most likely lose, or he’ll step down as leader of his party and as prime minister, and let a different leader take the Liberals to the ballot box next year.

The Prince

In Stephen Maher’s 2024 biography of Mr. Trudeau, the author recalls separate occasions in which Mr. Trudeau’s family members called him a “prince.”

“I’ve always known my whole life that this would be available to me if I want,” Mr. Maher quotes a young Mr. Trudeau as saying about entering politics.

When deciding where to start telling Mr. Trudeau’s political story, chroniclers have several choices.

There’s a 2012 charity boxing match, that he, then a young member of Parliament, won against a tough Conservative who had black belt in karate — people still bring up the fight.

Or the moment, in 2015, when he, as prime minister, unveiled the country’s first gender-balanced cabinet and — asked why this mattered — quipped: “Because it’s 2015.” Male leaders around the world were put on notice.

One might also look back to the eulogy he delivered in 2000 for his father, former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, for an early glimpse of Justin Trudeau the politician.

“We have gathered from coast to coast to coast. From one ocean to another, united in our grief to say goodbye,” Mr. Trudeau, then 29, told a packed cathedral of mourners. “But this is not the end.”

Mr. Trudeau, who turns 53 on Christmas Day, was born while his father was in his first of four terms in office.

The elder Trudeau had swept Canada off its feet in the late 1960s, in what came to be called “Trudeau-mania.” Eventually, voters soured on him too, though he stayed in power for 16 years, and his legacy helped launch his son’s career.

“There was this nostalgia that was associated with the name that really worked for Justin,” said Darrell Bricker, a seasoned pollster and chief executive of Ipsos Public Affairs.

“We were coming out of the time of tempestuous Canadian politics run by a lot of old men,” he added, “and even young men who just seemed old, so Justin was like a breath of fresh air.”

Liberal Icon

The “Because it’s 2015” comment on his cabinet’s gender parity catapulted Mr. Trudeau to global political renown.

Glossy magazines swooned; Vogue ranked him as one of 2015’s 10 “convention-defying hotties,” referring to him as a “Canadian politician-dreamboat.”

One former European leader from the Group of 7 industrialized democracies said early meetings with Mr. Trudeau were marked by people lining up to take selfies with him and treating him like some kind of rock star. The former leader asked not to be identified discussing past diplomatic meetings.

As the United States switched from the Obama to the Trump presidencies in 2016, Mr. Trudeau seemed to offer continuity with Mr. Obama’s politics. Few moments exemplified this more than Mr. Trudeau’s decision to offer refugees an open welcome in 2017, as Mr. Trump cracked down on immigrants.

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith,” Mr. Trudeau posted on X, then known as Twitter. “Diversity is our strength.”

At the time, Mr. Trump had issued his so-called Muslim ban curtailing travel to the United States for people from some Muslim-majority nations. Mr. Trudeau even went to the airport to personally welcome Syrian refugees arriving in Canada.

Mr. Trudeau was also at the forefront of post-colonial nations reckoning with the legacy of their treatment of Indigenous populations. While Mr. Trudeau has been criticized for not going far enough, it has been during his tenure that a reconciliation with Indigenous populations in Canada began in earnest.

Change All Around

But starting in 2017, his political fortunes at home had already started fading.

As he headed to the polls in 2019, Mr. Trudeau was rocked by scandal, including a luxurious free vacation he took that he failed to declare and videos from the 1990s and 2001 that surfaced showing him dressing up in blackface.

It took a toll: He could secure only a minority government, leaving his party dependent on allies to pass legislation.

And then came the pandemic. Critics describe Mr. Trudeau’s push for restrictive measures as a key reason for the animus against him.

Within two years, in the middle of the pandemic, Mr. Trudeau called an early election believing it might return him to a majority government; he was wrong. He ended up again commanding only a minority of representatives in the House of Commons.

By that point, the Western world’s center of political gravity was already shifting to the right over vaccine and restrictive mandates. In Canada that set off protests in various parts of the country that came to be known as the Freedom Convoy, including weeks of demonstrations in Ottawa, the capital, that paralyzed the city’s downtown.

Canadians found themselves battered by persistent inflation, setting off an affordability crisis, while an open migration policy to bring in workers backfired, turning one of the world’s most immigrant-friendly societies against newcomers.

Mr. Trudeau also faced turmoil on the family front, last year separating from his wife of 18 years, with whom he has three children.

A Walk in the Snow

Mr. Trump’s election victory in November has brought into sharp focus Mr. Trudeau’s weakened position. Mr. Trump has threatened to impose blanket 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, which would devastate Canada economically. Mr. Trump has also been mocking Mr. Trudeau online, referring to him as a governor, and to Canada as the 51st state.

This time a political brand that appears antithetical to Mr. Trump’s isn’t working for Mr. Trudeau. “He caught a wave on his way in, and when you catch a wave, it can lift you up,” Mr. Bricker said. “But on the other side, if you don’t get off, it will ground you.”

With elections required by October because of Canada’s electoral rules, Mr. Trudeau’s departure is increasingly seen as a foregone conclusion. The question is where this leaves his Liberal Party. The latest Ipsos poll, published Friday, found that the Liberals trail the Conservatives by 25 percentage points.

On Monday, his deputy prime minister and finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigned with a bombshell letter, accusing him of engaging in “costly political gimmicks” and being ill-prepared to face the challenge posed by Mr. Trump.

Then on Friday, the opposition party that has propped up his Liberal minority said it would bring a vote of confidence against it after Parliament resumes in January.

“Like most families, sometimes we have fights around the holidays,” Mr. Trudeau mused at a party for Liberal staff in Ottawa on Tuesday, in a nod to Ms. Freeland’s departure. “But of course, like most families, we find our way through it. You know, I love this country, I deeply love this party, I love you guys.”

But the party, like the country, may no longer love him back. Mr. Trudeau’s allies say the prime minister will take time over the holidays to decide his next steps.

A growing chorus is asking Mr. Trudeau to “take a walk in the snow,” a phrase that became part of political lore after his father, in February 1984, facing calls to resign, took a long walk in the snow.

When he came back, he had decided to resign.

Nacho Fernández Suárez winces when he recalls the eight years he spent as an administrative assistant doing odd errands in Argentina’s Congress. He was part of an inclusion program for people with disabilities.

“They bullied me, they pushed me, they treated me poorly,” said Mr. Fernández Suárez, 34, who has an intellectual disability. He was also bored, he added, barely given any work to do.

Boredom is not much of a problem these days for Mr. Fernández Suárez, who is part of the staff at a popular restaurant in Buenos Aires that is believed to be the first eating establishment in Argentina largely operated by neurodivergent individuals.

The restaurant, Alamesa, is seeking to change the paradigm of what inclusion in the workplace means for people who often do not have a clear path to employment after their formal schooling ends.

Even though Mr. Fernández Suárez earns about one-third of what he did as an assistant, his mother, Alejandra Ferrari, said he was thrilled because he “feels indispensable.” (The program in Argentina’s Congress he was hired through has been dissolved.)

“When you go to work and have a purpose,” she said, “it changes your life.”

That is precisely what inspired Dr. Fernando Polack, a renowned pediatric infectious disease specialist in Argentina, to open Alamesa this year as part of a deeply personal quest to figure out how his daughter, Julia, 26, who is autistic, could gain independence in a world that seemed hostile to her needs.

“I realized that the way I could take charge of what we’re going to do with Julia was to build something, and that had to be a job,” Dr. Polack said. “And to do that, I had to create that job.”

He dipped into his personal and family savings and settled on the idea of a restaurant in part because of childhood memories of feeling safe and secure while sitting around the dinner table with his large extended family during holidays.

Dr. Polack, who ran clinical trials for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in Argentina, quickly figured out he could apply his years of scientific, methodical research to build a team made up of people with nontraditional sets of skills.

Julia became the restaurant’s first official employee. The staff then expanded with other neurodivergent people Dr. Polack knew through Julia and word of mouth.

“To see the potential, that’s what we dedicate ourselves to — that is perhaps the heart of the venture,” Dr. Polack said, “understanding the potential of each person, the richness of each, what they can contribute.”

Sebastián Wainstein, Alamesa’s executive director who oversees daily operations, says the restaurant benefits from the differences among neurodivergent individuals.

Mr. Fernández Suárez, for example, he said, “is super chaotic, but he’s a character.”

“He’s very friendly when it comes to dealing with customers,” Mr. Wainstein said.

Among the 40 neurodivergent employees of Alamesa, Mr. Fernández Suárez also stands out because he can openly talk about his intellectual disability, which he says is the result of having contracted meningitis as a baby.

Most are not able to explain their disability, and no one asks them for a diagnosis before they are hired, Mr. Wainstein said.

Juan Pablo Coppola, 27, says he considers himself “different from the rest” and has experienced the feeling of being a nuisance his entire life in large part because of what he describes as his “extreme shyness.”

“In school, let’s say, the bullying was nonstop,” Mr. Coppola recalled, noting his own father continually pleaded with him “to be normal.” A few years ago, he said, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.

When he first joined Alamesa, he was so surprised by the supportive atmosphere that he could barely speak on the car ride home with his mother, though he did say that he was surprised that a group of people could treat him “really well.”

It was a stark contrast to his previous stint at a different restaurant, where he worked as a bus boy and never quite understood what was expected of him.

“They would send me to clean the bathrooms, and while I was cleaning, they would say, ‘What are you doing here? You need to go to wash dishes,’” Mr. Coppola said. “I was going crazy.”

None of the neurodivergent employees have specific jobs at Alamesa because the goal is for everyone to be able to do everything.

Dr. Polack says Alamesa’s “real secret” is to harness each individual’s strength to “get out of this narcissistic idea” that a person who is neurotypical “is the superior being.”

“Alamesa breaks with the idea that people with neurodivergence want to be like people without neurodivergence,” Dr. Polack said.

In the process, the restaurant, which is the subject of a recent documentary, has created a community.

“We go to the movies, to drink coffee, go bowling,” said Sofía Aguirre, 27, a neurodivergent employee.

Nestled in an upper-middle-class Buenos Aires neighborhood bustling with stores and restaurants, Alamesa is an oasis. Music is played at a low volume, and soundproof material on the walls and ceiling ensures there is no echo from the cacophony of conversations.

It is just one of the ways Alamesa tries to accommodate its staff, many of whom are particularly sensitive to loud and unexpected noises, a common trait among those on the autism spectrum.

The restaurant, which serves only lunch, has a state-of-the-art kitchen with no knives because all raw materials come sliced and diced. There are also no open flames — the food is cooked in special ovens that use hot air and steam.

To help employees with reading difficulties, ingredients are color-coded so they can easily be matched to any of the 10 main courses and five desserts on the menu.

The menu, with an emphasis on international cuisine, includes an eclectic mix of dishes, such as a pastrami sandwich, salmon with panko breadcrumbs and Moroccan chicken with couscous.

“A lot of people came at first because of the concept of an inclusive restaurant, the food was secondary,” Mr. Wainstein said. “Now, people are also starting to come because, ‘Hey, I ate really well.’”

Alamesa does employ about a dozen workers without neurological issues, many of whom are psychology students or recent graduates from a local university, who provide support to the other workers as needed.

They can help resolve interpersonal conflicts among the neurodivergent staff and can tell if a worker is getting tired and needs a break.

Having such a large staff is one challenge of running Alamesa, but the restaurant manages to turn a small profit even as Argentina is enduring difficult economic times.

When it first opened, the restaurant was fully booked for weeks amid widespread attention from the news media and famous personalities, including Pope Francis, who is from Argentina.

“I congratulate you on the work you do,” the pontiff said in a video message addressed to Alamesa’s employees. “Thank you because it is a contribution to society, a unique contribution, a creative contribution from each one of you.”

Since then, the rush has subsided, but walking into the restaurant without a reservation can still mean having to wait. That has led to uncomfortable situations for Ms. Aguirre, who is often asked to serve as a hostess.

“Sometimes people ask, ‘Please let me in,’” she said. “Sometimes people get insistent and you have to say, ‘Sorry, sorry, I apologize, there’s no room.’”

Though the neurotypical employees continue to play roles like running the cash register and dealing with suppliers, they do so with a neurodivergent employee by their side so they can learn the ropes.

The goal is to make neurotypical workers superfluous.

“Our idea, and it was never utopian, it was always very concrete,” Mr. Wainstein said, “is that one day all neurotypicals will disappear, and they will take charge.”

At end-of-year celebrations, some bosses give their employees gifts of appreciation and extend warm wishes. On Saturday, Pope Francis used his annual Christmas message to the leaders of the Vatican’s various departments to admonish them.

Again.

“A church community lives in joyful and fraternal harmony to the extent that its members walk in the life of humility, renouncing thinking the worst and speaking ill of others,” Francis told the cardinals and prelates who make up the Vatican’s administration.

He also touched on a personal bugaboo: gossip.

“Gossip is an evil that destroys social life, sickens people’s hearts and leads to nothing,” Francis said.

For years, Francis has used his Christmas message to the Curia, as the Vatican administration is known, to air his concerns about the workplace environment in the tiny city-state and to urge his top advisers to do some soul-searching.

He opened off-topic on Saturday with a reminder of the devastation of the war in Gaza, in what appeared to be a reference to deadly Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip on Friday.

“Yesterday, children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he said. “I want to say it, because it touches the heart.”

To be sure, Saturday’s message was far tamer than the one in 2014, when he criticized the Curia for what he called a narcissistic “pathology of power” and “existential schizophrenia.” Warning against a lust for power, hypocritical double lives and a lack of spiritual empathy among some men of God, Francis listed 15 “ailments and temptations” that he said were weakening the Curia’s ability to serve.

In 2018, Francis excoriated “the infidelity of those who betray their vocation” and “hide behind good intentions in order to stab their brothers and sisters in the back and to sow weeds, division and bewilderment.” They resembled Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus but did not repent, he said.

He stayed mum on corruption last year, even though a cardinal who had once been one of the church’s most powerful Vatican officials had been found guilty a few days earlier of embezzlement and fraud in a high-profile case that raised questions about the prevalence of financial malfeasance and incompetence at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church.

This year, Francis returned to gossip, which he has identified as the root of much evil in the church. In a major 2018 Vatican document, Francis said that those who spread gossip “are really the enemies of peace,” and on his travels he has regularly warned priests and nuns to refrain from doing it.

“Do you know what a gossiping nun is like? She is a terrorist,” he told a group of contemplative nuns during a 2018 trip to Peru. “Because gossip is like a bomb. The terrorist, just like the devil, goes in whispering and murmuring, throws the bomb, destroys and calmly walks off. No to terrorist nuns, no to gossip.”

At the end of the audience on Saturday, he gave the prelates two books: one on the important of grace, and the other a reflection on human frailty.

Iranian-backed Houthi militants launched a missile from Yemen that landed in Tel Aviv early Saturday morning after air defenses failed to intercept it, the latest in an increasing barrage of Houthi attacks.

At least 16 people were lightly wounded by shattered glass in nearby buildings, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency service. It was at least the sixth such attack over the past month.

The attack set off air-raid sirens across central Israel ordering hundreds of thousands of residents to enter reinforced bomb shelters. The missile landed in a playground in Tel Aviv in the middle of the night.

Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Houthis, said the group’s fighters had launched the missile “to aid the victory of the oppressed Palestinian people and its fighters.” He also claimed it had struck a “military target.”

On Thursday, Israeli fighter jets flew over 1,000 miles to bombard sites in Houthi-controlled Yemen, including the capital, Sana. The Israeli military said it had struck power plants as well as fuel and oil tanks.

Israel and the Houthis, who control much of northwestern Yemen, have traded fire since October 2023, when the Yemeni militia began firing rockets and drones at Israel in what it has described as a campaign in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

While military analysts widely deem the Houthis less powerful than other Iran-backed militias — like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza — they have managed to penetrate Israel’s defenses multiple times. In July, a Houthi drone attack killed a civilian in Tel Aviv, prompting Israeli airstrikes on the port of Hudaydah in western Yemen.

On Thursday, a school in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan was damaged after a missile fired overnight from Yemen was partly intercepted, the Israeli military said. At least three people were wounded by broken glass, according to Magen David Adom, but no one was seriously injured or killed.

The Houthis have also attacked cargo vessels passing through the Red Sea in an attempt to enforce a commercial embargo on Israel. That has prompted international condemnation and a campaign of airstrikes by the United States and its allies against them.

U.S. military forces struck again in Yemen on Saturday, its Central Command said in a statement, saying it had targeted a missile-storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by the Houthis in Sanaa.

The American forces also shot down Houthi attack drones and an anti-ship cruise missile, the statement said. It did not mention Israel, but said the strikes intended to “disrupt and degrade Houthi operations” and that they reflected the U.S. military’s commitment to protect its personnel, regional partners and international shipping.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, appeared to suggest on Thursday that Israel could take even more muscular action against the Houthis. But with the Yemeni militia so far from Israeli territory, it is not clear what Israel could do to decisively end the attacks.

“They are finding out and will find out the hard way: Whoever harms Israel will pay a very heavy price,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement.

Israel fought Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023. In November, Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire after Israel assassinated its leaders and invaded Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket fire.

With Russia intensifying airstrikes on Ukraine’s power grid over the past month, darkness once again engulfs Ukrainian cities at night. In Kyiv, residents rely on cellphone flashlights to navigate unlit streets. To walk their dogs, they use glow sticks doubling as makeshift collars.

Ukraine has so far weathered the effects of three major Russian strikes over the past month by cutting street lighting and imposing intermittent shutdowns to ease pressure on the power grid. But two years of attacks on power plants and substations have left the country’s energy network on the verge of collapse, experts say.

The United Nations has warned that power outages could last up to 18 hours a day this winter, “leaving civilians without the electricity they need to power homes, run water pumps and allow children to study online.”

That has forced the Ukrainian authorities to turn to unconventional measures to try to avert an energy crisis. They are bringing an entire aging Lithuanian power plant to Ukraine to scavenge parts for the damaged grid; have moved to lease floating power plants from Turkey; and have even requested a U.N. presence at critical substations, hoping to deter Russian attacks.

“We are doing everything possible,” Viktoriya Hryb, the head of the Ukrainian Parliament’s subcommittee on energy security, said in a recent interview in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Still, Ms. Hryb and other Ukrainian officials admitted that these measures would not be enough to prevent blackouts. In some cases, they may not even be ready before year’s end, when subzero temperatures drive up electricity consumption.

Here’s a closer look at Ukraine’s efforts to keep the lights on, and the challenges it faces.

Scavenging for parts

Months of Russian attacks have depleted Ukraine’s stockpiles of equipment to repair and maintain power plants.

Because Ukraine’s energy facilities were mostly built when it was part of the Soviet Union, they are reliant on spare parts from Soviet-era facilities, said Andrian Prokip, a Kyiv-based energy expert with the Kennan Institute in Washington.

So last year, DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, began hunting through plants in former Eastern Bloc countries like Slovakia and the Czech Republic to find compatible parts. “We found power plants using generators and turbines that were pretty much like ours,” said Oleksiy Povolotskiy, the head of DTEK’s recovery office.

In one of Ukraine’s boldest projects, an entire power plant that once supplied heat to half of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, is being disassembled with support from the European Union and its parts used to repair a few damaged Ukrainian facilities.

The operation began this summer and is continuing, according to Ignitis, the Lithuanian energy company that owns the plant. More than 300 pieces of equipment are being shipped to Ukraine, their exact destination kept secret for security reasons.

The plant’s spare parts were originally scheduled to arrive in Ukraine before winter, but logistical obstacles and bureaucratic delays have pushed back the timeline, and some key equipment will not be delivered until next year, according to officials and business people involved in the operation, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitive nature.

Renting floating power plants

Building new power plants is a lengthy process that Ukraine cannot afford as winter sets in. As an alternative, the country plans to rent “powerships” — floating plants mounted on cargo ships — to supply electricity to the Black Sea coastal region of Odesa, which lacks power generation facilities.

The powerships, running on fuel or gas, will be moored in the region’s ports and will transmit electricity to the grid via onshore substations.

Ukrainian officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the plan’s sensitivity, said they were in talks with Karpowership, a Turkish company specializing in powerships, to rent several vessels. Last year, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with a state-owned Ukrainian energy trader to install powerships capable of generating 500 megawatts per hour, enough electricity to supply one million Ukrainians.

Karpowership did not respond to requests for comment.

The plans have accelerated in recent weeks, with the government issuing a decree permitting the installation of gas pistons and turbines on ships to power the floating plants. Ukrenergo, the national electricity operator, said this fall that it had begun building transmission facilities to link the ships to the grid. A Ukrainian official said the facilities were now completed.

Ms. Hryb said two powerships might be operational within weeks if Ukraine could overcome two challenges.

The Ukrainian government is trying to get its Western partners to pay part of the cost of generating electricity on the ships, which Ms. Hryb and Mr. Prokip said is very high. Another issue is ensuring the ships’ safety in the Odesa region, an area frequently bombed by Russia.

Mr. Prokip said there was hope that the ships might be spared because they are operated by Turkey, a country that has mediated agreements between Russia and Ukraine during the war.

Stationing U.N. experts at critical substations

With most of its thermal and hydroelectric power plants destroyed or badly damaged, Ukraine has relied on its three operational nuclear power stations to keep the lights on. Together, they can provide 7.7 gigawatts of electricity per hour, more than half of the country’s current generation capacity, according to DiXi Group, a Ukrainian energy think tank.

Russia has refrained from attacking the nuclear plants directly, which could trigger a catastrophic disaster. Instead, it has recently focused on crippling their ability to transmit power by destroying the substations connecting them to the grid.

Since August, the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body, has recorded four attacks on such substations. Each time, the strikes forced several reactors offline or required them to reduce output as a precautionary measure.

Ukraine has built concrete shelters around the substations to protect them, but officials admit that they are ineffective against missiles. So they have turned to a drastic measure: asking officials from the U.N. agency to stay at the substations, banking on their presence to deter Russian attacks.

Moscow might be reluctant to risk the lives of the agency’s staff because it depends on its support for its nuclear program exports, said Jan Vande Putte, a nuclear expert at Greenpeace.

In September, Ukraine’s parliamentary energy committee sent a letter to the agency that was reviewed by The New York Times, urging it to station “a permanent monitoring group” at critical substations to “prevent possible provocations” by Russia. The next month, Yuliia Kyian, a top official at the Energy Ministry, said Ukraine was negotiating with the agency to arrange such oversight.

So far, the International Atomic Energy Agency has agreed to conduct periodic monitoring missions at critical substations but not to station agents there permanently, Greenpeace said.

The agency reported that one of its vehicles was hit by a drone while en route to inspect a Russian-controlled nuclear plant in southern Ukraine last week. The agency did not specify which side launched the drone, and both Russia and Ukraine traded blame. Mr. Vande Putte said the attack appeared to be a deliberate Russian attempt to intimidate the agency.

Ms. Hryb conceded that International Atomic Energy Agency agents would risk their lives by staying at the substations. “But who in Ukraine doesn’t today?” she asked.