South Korea’s leadership crisis deepened on Friday after lawmakers voted to oust a second head of state, the acting president, in less than two weeks.

The move prolonged the political vacuum that has gripped South Korea since President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the country this month by briefly putting it under military rule for the first time in decades.

Lawmakers impeached and suspended Mr. Yoon on Dec. 14 over the martial law move, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo stepped in as acting president. But Mr. Han’s tenure would also prove short-lived, as opposition lawmakers voted on Friday to impeach Mr. Han, as well.

This was the first time South Korea had impeached an interim leader. It meant that South Korea continued to be without a strong elected leader who could take charge of the government and military in one of Washington’s most important allies, at a time when the country is grappling with North Korea’s nuclear threats and economic challenges at home. The political uncertainty has pushed business and consumer confidence lower and caused the currency, the won, to plunge.

The latest impeachment “suggests to the world the possibility that Korea’s political unrest could be prolonged and worsen,” Jeong Hoiok, a professor of political science at Myoungji University in Seoul, said in an email. This would cause “significant harm to the diplomacy and economic status that Korea has built so far.”

Mr. Han’s impeachment meant that the finance minister and deputy prime minister, Choi Sang-mok, would be next in line to be named acting president. But like Mr. Han, Mr. Choi has no electoral mandate.

“The most important thing right now is to minimize the confusion in state affairs,” Mr. Choi said after assuming his role as interim leader. “The government will do its best to stabilize them.”

The move to impeach Mr. Han on Friday came after he refused to appoint three judges to fill vacancies in the Constitutional Court, the body that will be deciding whether to reinstate or formally remove Mr. Yoon.

At the heart of the matter is how the court might rule on Mr. Yoon’s impeachment. Six or more justices of the nine-member court must vote in favor of impeachment to remove Mr. Yoon from office. The top court currently has only six justices, after three others retired earlier this year, so the impeachment could be overturned with just one dissenting voice in Mr. Yoon’s trial.

Mr. Yoon has vowed to overturn his impeachment at the Constitutional Court. But the opposition wanted him ousted through a full nine-justice Constitutional Court as soon as possible and described Mr. Han’s refusal to appoint the justices as a delaying tactic by the governing camp.

The opposition had pushed for Mr. Han, as acting president, to sign off on nominees to fill the bench in the Constitutional Court. All the three vacancies were slots to be filled by the National Assembly, although they were formally appointed by the president. But Mr. Yoon’s governing party argued that only an elected president has the power to appoint justices.

Mr. Han had said that he would not appoint the nominees unless the rival parties came to an agreement on whether he had the authority to do so as the acting president, and on who should be appointed as justices.

An acting president should “refrain from exercising the president’s own significant powers, including the appointment of constitutional institutions,” said Mr. Han, a career bureaucrat.

The opposition has accused Mr. Han of aiding Mr. Yoon in his brief declaration of martial law on Dec. 3. Lawmakers accused Mr. Yoon of perpetrating an insurrection by sending troops into the National Assembly to block them from voting down his martial law and to detain his opponents.

The Constitutional Court has up to six months to decide whether to reinstate or remove Mr. Yoon. Mr. Yoon’s trial started on Friday. He did not attend court, but was instead represented by his lawyers.

Mr. Yoon also faces investigations by the police and prosecutors on charges including insurrection. On Friday, the police raided a presidential safe house where Mr. Yoon was alleged to have met with officials to discuss imposing martial law, according to the Korean news agency, Yonhap.

The political crisis has added to worries about South Korea’s economy, which was already facing slowing growth and worries about exports. On Thursday, the won, one of the weakest currencies in Asia this year, tumbled to levels against the U.S. dollar not seen since the global financial crisis a decade and a half ago. The stock market is down about 10 percent this year.

The rival parties had disagreed on how many votes were needed for Mr. Han to be impeached. The governing party maintained that just as in the impeachment of a president, at least two-thirds of the 300-member National Assembly had to vote in favor for the motion to pass. (President Yoon’s party controls 108 seats.) The opposition asserted, however, that a simple majority vote would be enough to remove him from his office as prime minister as outlined by the Constitution.

On Friday, the speaker of the National Assembly, Woo Won-shik, a member of the Democratic Party, announced that only 151 votes — a majority — were required. Lawmakers from the governing party then shouted that the vote was invalid and that Mr. Woo should resign.

Professor Cha Jina, a law professor at Korea University in Seoul, said that Mr. Han should be subject to a majority vote because “the acting president in South Korea is not actually the president and is just working in their stead as the prime minister.”

The motion was passed, 192-0. Mr. Han said he would respect the National Assembly’s decision and indicated that he would step aside to allow Mr. Choi to take over as the interim leader. He also said he would wait for the Constitutional Court to decide whether the impeachment vote was constitutional.

“In order not to add to the confusion and uncertainty, I will suspend my duties in line with relevant laws, and wait for the swift and wise decision of the Constitutional Court,” Mr. Han said in a statement.

Mr. Han has been working in the government since the early 1970s, serving in posts that include trade negotiator, finance minister and ambassador to the United States.

Like Mr. Han, Mr. Choi had been a career bureaucrat, climbing the ranks at the finance ministry. He served as a deputy finance minister when former President Park Geun-hye was impeached and removed from office in 2017. He then left government until Mr. Yoon picked him as his presidential secretary for economic affairs in 2022 and later made him the finance minister.

Lee Jae-mook, a professor of political science from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, said that he expected the governing party to contest the legal validity of Friday’s vote.

“The essence of democracy is mutual respect for the other side,” he said. But with politics becoming “more polarized, South Korean democracy is being put to the test.”

The walls of the mausoleum for late President Hafez al-Assad are scrawled with graffiti now — things that Syrians have long felt but could never say aloud during his family’s five-decade dictatorship.

The cavernous building sits high on a hilltop overlooking al-Qardaha, the Assad family’s ancestral village. For the past few weeks, Syrians have converged there to curse, spit and even urinate on the memorial, its high arched ceilings charred from when rebels set the tomb on fire.

“Curse your soul, Hafez” and “Didn’t I tell you we were coming for you?” read some of the messages they left behind.

Al-Qardaha sits in the middle of Latakia province on Syria’s western Mediterranean coast — a region that is the heartland of the country’s Alawite minority, which includes the Assads. About 10 percent of Syrians belong to the sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and Alawites dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad dynasty.

As the country emerges from the long dictatorship, Syrians are demanding accountability for crimes committed under the brutal rule that began with Hafez al-Assad and was passed down to his recently ousted son, Bashar al-Assad. This cry for justice has left the Alawite community with a deep sense of anxiety.

“When they come in and curse and ransack, it doesn’t matter who he was,” Dr. Fidaa Deeb, a gynecologist and an Alawite, said of the desecration of the mausoleum. “This is the grave of someone dead,” he said at a recent meeting at the al-Qardaha village hall. “It needs to be protected.”

But it is not only the dead who need protecting, according to Alawite residents of Latakia.

During a recent visit to the province, Alawites there spoke of their fears of retribution and, like a mantra, virtually all repeated that they need the same things: safety and security. Their fears have been stoked by threatening posts on social media, with some Syrians saying the Alawites should pay for supporting the Assad government.

Some Alawites have called on their fellow Syrians to welcome and protect them instead of prosecuting them.

“We don’t want them to scare us,” said Dr. Deeb. “We shouldn’t have to prove our loyalty. The country should embrace us.”

Ahmed al-Shara, the Islamist leader of the rebels who overthrew Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, has sought to reassure Syria’s many minorities including Alawites, Christians and Druse. The day after Mr. al-Assad’s Dec. 8 downfall, Mr. al-Shara’s group sent a representative to al-Qardaha to meet with village leaders, residents said.

The meeting was a good start, according to local leaders. But in the days that followed, they said, armed men believed to be members of other rebel factions came into the village, stole vehicles and looted homes.

Alawites protested this week in several provinces in response to a video showing an alleged attack on a shrine holy to the sect, according to the British-based war monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. But officials in the transitional government have said it was an old video that was republished.

Some Alawites have said ominously that if the new government cannot guarantee their safety, they will take matters into their own hands to protect themselves.

Many members of the sect contend that they, too, were oppressed under the dictatorship, just like other Syrians. They deny that they were a favored class and point to ramshackle homes and low salaries as proof that they suffered from poverty.

Some of them said that economic desperation is what pushed many Alawites to join the military, rather than ideological reasons.

Early in Syria’s 13-year civil war, which began in 2011, explosions hit parts of the western coastal region where much of the Alawite population lives. Rebels were rising up against Mr. al-Assad and his government responded by distributing weapons to some members of the minority, residents of al-Qardaha said.

Some of the Alawites who were armed around this time have handed over their weapons to the interim government. But many are refusing to disarm without some sort of guarantees that they will be protected from attacks.

Following the looting in al-Qardaha, the new Syrian interim government sent forces to guard a checkpoint outside the village.

But beyond the immediate fears for their safety, Alawites are also calling on the newly empowered leaders not to single them out in the quest for justice and accountability.

“Either there should be amnesty for all the war criminals and not just certain individuals, or prosecution for all the war criminals from all the sides,” Dr. Awas Uthman, a member of the al-Qardaha village council and an Alawite, said at the recent council meeting there.

But such a blanket amnesty would be unacceptable to many in a country where hundreds of thousands have been killed, imprisoned and tortured under the Assads. The new government has said it will give amnesty to military conscripts, but hold accountable those responsible for deaths or torture of fellow Syrians.

Officials with the new interim government say it is too early for the Alawite community to be dictating any terms, accusing them of being a direct party to the Assad regime’s crimes against fellow Syrians.

“They need to stay silent for at least a year and not make any demands,” said Ahmad Hilal, a lawyer who now heads the Palace of Justice, a court in the northwestern city of Aleppo. “They killed the prisoners in the prisons. They showed us no mercy. Now they are talking about nationalism and being part of a nation? Why didn’t they speak up before this?”

Mr. Hilal, part of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, said that when he was in the military as a young conscript, he saw for himself how Alawite soldiers and officers were treated differently.

“They burned the entire country,” he said. At the entrance of his office lay a torn down photo of the ousted Mr. Assad as a makeshift door mat. “You are living in palaces and reaped millions of dollars. Should you be allowed to keep all of this?”

In al-Qardaha, a stone mansion with blue shutters that belonged to Rifaat al-Assad, the uncle of the ousted president, has been ransacked and looted. On a recent visit, a man and his nephew — both dressed in tattered clothing — were scouring the rooms looking for metal they could strip and sell for scraps.

Near the front door, a green safe had been pried open, its contents long gone. The pair left with a space heater and a bag overfilled with scrap metal.

Next door is the former home of Hafez al-Assad, a three-story stone and brick structure with a guard post at the gate. In the backyard, boys and men chopped down trees to cart away for firewood.

Across the street, the homes of residents were ramshackle and missing windows. The walls were peeling and water stained. Electricity comes only a few hours a day. Clothes were hung to dry on clotheslines.

Yusra al-Ajouria, a 50-year-old mother of four from al-Qardaha, said she is married to a career military officer who served under Bashar al-Assad’s rule, a brigadier general in the engineering unit. Her family of six lived for decades in military officers’ housing near the presidential palace in the capital, Damascus.

When Mr. al-Assad fled Damascus, so did Ms. al-Ajouria and her family, fearing retribution. They headed back to al-Qardaha.

She said they are now living with her in-laws in the village, along with four other families, all crammed into one dilapidated home.

She insisted that her husband had never been on a front line and did not have any blood on his hands.

On the day that Mr. al-Assad fell, the family was driving in a military vehicle along the highway from Damascus to al-Qardaha. They were stopped at a rebel checkpoint and forced to get out, Ms. al-Ajouria said.

“‘Get out, Alawite dogs,’” one of the rebels spat at them, according to Ms. al-Ajouria. She said she begged them to let her family keep their bags of clothes and the 7 million in Syrian pounds, less than $100, that they had with them.

Her 26-year-old daughter, Batool al-Ajouria, said the rebel had threatened to shoot them if they did not walk away.

“We are innocent,” the daughter said, a long cardigan wrapped tightly around her against the cold. “We didn’t gain any benefit from the regime.”

Muhammad Haj Kadour contributed reporting.

The children and their caretakers know little of the language or the culture. They know even less of what may happen to them or their loved ones in the months to come.

They do know war.

Sixteen young people, all but one younger than 15, were evacuated from the Gaza Strip early this year after sustaining dire injuries in the war there between Israel and Hamas. The airlifts were the result of painstaking negotiations between aid groups and several governments, including Israel, Egypt and Italy, and each of the wounded was accompanied by a caretaker, usually a relative.

Some of the children had limbs amputated to save their lives. Many will bear scars for life. Most have lost family members, and left behind others whose safety is uncertain. All face uncertain futures, with questions about whether there will ever be a home to return to, or if they should apply for asylum.

“Italy is beautiful, but I need support,” said Lina Gamal, Shaymaa’s aunt and caretaker, listing the many family members she left behind. “As long as I have no one around me, it’s nothing.”

But the evacuees still consider themselves fortunate. Since Hamas led its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel from Gaza, and the Israelis responded with a devastating military campaign, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Tens of thousands more are believed to be permanently disabled in the largely ruined enclave.

The children face not only difficult recoveries but also the challenges of schoolyards and summer camps filled with peers who neither speak their native language nor know much about the devastation in Gaza.

When Shaymaa first joined summer camp, “no one noticed anything,” said Guilia Mingardi, one of her teachers. “Things changed when we first went to the swimming pool. That’s when all the questions started.”

After swimming, one classmate cautiously tried to touch her prosthesis. Shaymaa frowned at the boy and covered herself up. When the children asked her questions about what happened, she ignored them.

An explosion in January by her family’s house in southern Gaza cost Shaymaa the limb. Italian doctors had to perform a second amputation, in part to stop an infection, and then fit her for a prosthesis.

At first, Shaymaa struggled to use it, limping, said Ms. Gamal, who lives with her niece in government housing alongside families from Nigeria and Ukraine.

But Shaymaa adapted quickly. Racing down the corridor, she sometimes trips and falls. Now she immediately gets up, fixes her loose shoe, and starts running again.

Ahmad, 4, is still struggling with his prosthesis. He lost his leg when an Israeli bombardment hit his family’s home in October 2023 in the central Gazan town of Nuseirat. His sister’s legs and shoulder were severely injured, and his mother’s shoulder and leg were broken.

His 35-year-old father, Montaser al-Saafen, was unharmed. “When I realized what had happened, I went through the rubble, bringing out my family members one by one, including the body of my mother and the remains of my father,” he said.

Twelve family members were killed in the attack, and 15 wounded. Afterward, Mr. al-Saafen managed to take his 12-year-old daughter, Rema, to Egypt for treatment, while Ahmad and their mother remained in a Gaza hospital.

Rema struggled in Egypt, refusing to speak, her father said. She only began to feel better four months later, when her mother and Ahmad joined them there.

The four family members were eventually airlifted to Italy for treatment, but they were forced to leave two children — Samir, 10, and Fayza, 7 — behind with relatives in Gaza.

The children were slightly wounded during an Israeli operation in June that rescued four hostages and killed scores of Gazans in Nuseirat, said their mother, Wjdan.

“I don’t wish this on anyone,” she said.

Rema was at risk of needing amputation when the family arrived in Italy, but doctors managed to save her legs. Her condition is slowly improving, though doctors say she will need plastic surgery.

Ahmad, growing fast, needs to change his prosthesis every nine months. He never wants it far from his reach.

“Where is my leg?” he asked his father as was buckled up for a visit to an orthopedic center in Bologna to test a new prosthetic. “Don’t keep it in the back. Bring it here next to me.”

The family applied for asylum in Italy to continue their children’s treatment. They also applied to bring their two other children as soon as they’re allowed to leave Gaza.

But Mr. al-Saafen, who ran a photography studio in Gaza, mainly for weddings and events, still feels conflicted. He had never thought of leaving before his children were wounded. “I’m like a fish outside of water,” he said.

Baian, the young girl pulled from the rubble, had no immediate family members who could join her on the journey to Italy for emergency treatment. Her mother and father, as well as her 7-year-old twin siblings and her 7-month-old sister, were killed in a bombardment that hit her Gaza neighborhood in December 2023, said her aunt, Fatma Hasanian.

The attack hit the area a day before Baian’s fourth birthday, and she was found with her head buried under rubble, Ms. Hasanian said. She sustained wounds to her head, broken teeth, and a fractured leg. She still has a limp.

Rescuers took Baian to a hospital in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, where her leg was operated on. By the time relatives reached her, Ms. Hasanian said, doctors were warning that Baian was in critical condition and needed to travel if there was any hope for her survival.

Ms. Hasanian, 34, reached Gaza’s southern border crossing with Egypt, along with her 5-year-old daughter, Layal. But the authorities would not let the girl cross, saying they needed her father’s approval.

With no internet or phone service, Ms. Hasanian could not reach her husband, and so her daughter had to return with Ms. Hasanian’s mother into Gaza, where she remains in a tent in Khan Younis.

“I’m devastated to be away from my daughter,” Ms. Hasanian said.

From Egypt, Baian and her aunt traveled to Bologna in February.

In Italy, Baian has spent time in four hospitals, and her condition has greatly improved. She has learned some Italian, and started swimming classes as therapy for her leg. Since doctors say that Baian’s treatment will take almost two years, Ms. Hasanian has applied for asylum and to bring her daughter to join them.

Many of the children’s scars are unseen. Sarah Yusuf, 6, freezes when she hears fireworks pop over Bologna at night. Once, with a pale face, she asked her caretaker and a cousin of Sarah’s father, Niveen Foad, “Can the Israelis reach here?”

Sarah was badly injured in November 2023 in a strike that hit her family’s home in central Gaza. The attack left her pregnant mother partly paralyzed, her father missing and her 2-year-old brother killed, said Ms. Foad.

Ms. Foad agreed to be her caretaker for the evacuation — it was unclear who else could — on the condition that she could bring three of her own daughters, now 3, 12 and 15 years old.

Ms. Foad, who had never left Gaza before, now finds herself living in a foreign country with four children. She said she did not regret the decision, even if its consequences are hard to predict.

“Once I crossed the border and reached Egypt, I felt that this was perhaps the first step toward estrangement, where one leaves his family behind and starts a new life,” she said.

But she constantly worries about the five older children she had to leave in Gaza, especially when attacks land close to where they are staying. During the deadly Israeli rescue operation in Nuseirat, she said, one of her sons called her, saying their turn had arrived.

“I wash my face with tears every morning, thinking: Will I ever be able to see my kids and my parents one day in Gaza?” Ms. Foad asked.

But she also wants to make the most of her time in Italy. She is taking Italian lessons, and hopes to continue her education and open a business selling Palestinian food. Her three children and Sarah started school in September.

Still, the feelings of homesickness can be hard to bear for the young Gazans in Italy. Every time Shaymaa, the 5-year-old learning to use her new leg, sees an airplane, she makes the same request:

“Please take me back to Gaza.”

It wasn’t long ago that Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution was packed with American tourists knocking into each other with selfie sticks while taking photos of the iconic image of the revolutionary Che Guevara and trying to catch a ride in a candy-apple red 1952 Chevrolet Bel-Air.

Today, those polished 1950s-era American convertibles that came to symbolize quintessential Cuba sit empty, the tourists they once carried largely gone.

The drivers spend their lives like most Cubans do: coping with prolonged power outages, standing in line at poorly stocked supermarkets and watching their friends, family and neighbors — sick of all the hardships — pack up and leave.

Ten years ago, President Barack Obama stunned the world by restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, ending more than 50 years of Cold War estrangement between the United States and a country with which it had once been on the brink of nuclear war.

For two and a half years, Cuba brimmed with enthusiasm amid a remarkable wave of investment and tourism, fueled by deals signed by major American companies such as Google, AT&T and Major League Baseball.

But a financial implosion caused by a cascade of factors — the tightening of U.S. policy by the Trump administration, Cuba’s mismanagement of its economy, the crushing effect of the Covid-19 pandemic — has kept visitors away and launched an immigration exodus of epic proportions.

Tourism, once a lifeblood of Cuba’s economy, has collapsed, down nearly 50 percent since 2017, with new U.S. visa regulations making it harder for even Europeans to travel there.

“The comparison between then and now is literally night and day,” said Luis Manuel Pérez, who works as a chauffeur.

A former engineering professor, Mr. Pérez, 57, once had a stream of customers who paid $40 an hour to ride in a classic car. Now, he’s lucky to land one a day.

“The difference is abysmal,” he said.

Many of the thousands of private businesses that the Cuban government allowed to open in recent years are trying to stay afloat after losing so many workers to migration. Streets are filled with garbage as fuel shortages impede trash pickup.

Many Cubans put it succinctly: 10 years ago, there was hope. Now, there’s despair.

“You go on the street, and people’s smiles are fading,” said Adriana Heredia Sánchez, who owns a clothing store in Old Havana.

Cuba’s unraveling underscores the United States’ oversized role in the country, and comes as Donald J. Trump is about to return to the White House: He has nominated Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida and a Cuba hard-liner, to be secretary of state.

By many measures, Cuba is suffering its worst crisis since Fidel Castro seized power 66 years ago, surpassing even the early 1990s when the dissolution of the Soviet Union left Cuba without its chief lifeline.

Cuba has suffered three nationwide blackouts since October. Official figures show the population has plunged by at least one million, or 10 percent, since the pandemic. More than 675,000 of those Cubans moved to the United States.

Even the infant mortality rate, which communist rulers had so proudly brought to levels lower than the United States, has been climbing.

Cuba was one of the few countries in Latin America touted for eliminating child malnutrition. But today its milk rations for children, as well as staples such as rice and beans, are often delivered late to state-run stores, if at all.

The sense of misery is a far cry from the excitement felt the week in 2016 when Mr. Obama attended a Tampa Bay Rays baseball game in Havana with the Cuban president, Raúl Castro.

“If Obama had run for president in Cuba, he would have been elected,” Jaime Morales, a tour guide in Havana, said laughing.

Mr. Obama also eased U.S. policy toward the island, allowing American cruise ships to dock in Cuba, more U.S. airlines to fly there and more Americans to visit.

Then, President Trump reversed course. In 2018, after mysterious illnesses befell U.S. Embassy employees, which some believed to be an attack by a hostile nation, he sent so many workers home that it effectively closed the embassy. (The Biden administration reopened it in 2023.)

In his last days in office, Mr. Trump also returned Cuba to a list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation severely limiting its ability to do business globally and that President Biden kept in place.

Mr. Morales, 44, recalls that a ship was already at port when the cruise policy was revoked: He was at a pier waiting for passengers with reservations for his walking tours of Havana, but nobody disembarked.

“It was like a bucket of cold water in the face,” he said. “The fantasy had ended.”

Ricardo Zúniga, a top Obama aide who conducted the secret negotiations to restore diplomatic ties, acknowledged that the administration failed to calculate how strongly allies loyal to Fidel Castro would oppose U.S. measures after the former leader spoke out against them publicly.

Though there was never an official quid pro quo for the lifting of travel and trade restrictions, Cuba freed political prisoners and broadly agreed to increase internet access and permit more private enterprise.

But the government was slow to authorize contracts with U.S. companies, while small businesses faced many bureaucratic roadblocks.

Fidel Castro knew that increased internet access and economic freedoms would lead more people to question Cuba’s lack of basic rights and could undermine the regime, Mr. Zúniga said. Castro saw the moves as a U.S. Trojan horse, and “that’s 100 percent what it was,” he said.

“My biggest takeaway is that Cuban government leadership never took advantage of opportunities to allow for gradual change in response to popular will,” he said. “So now they are stuck with social collapse.”

Ben Rhodes, another former Obama aide who worked on the negotiations, said that Mr. Biden’s decision to largely keep the Trump policies was particularly damaging, because it made them “bipartisan.”

“What U.S. interests are advanced by trying to turn a country 90 miles from Florida into a failed state with a starving population?” he said.

Two senior Biden administration officials defended its Cuba policy, noting that Mr. Biden did reverse some restrictions. It lifted a cap on how much money Cubans in the United States could send home, increased flights and created more banking opportunities for Cuban entrepreneurs.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration did not authorize on-the-record-interviews.

But Cuba, one of the officials said, never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Cuba’s harsh crackdown of a popular uprising in 2021 left hundreds of people in prison, which made it harder for Mr. Biden to justify easing restrictions, the official said.

Several Cuban American members of Congress who favored the restrictions also held considerable sway, and critics said the White House was concerned about the political landscape ahead of November’s election.

Mr. Rubio and other Republicans who helped shape Mr. Trump’s Cuba policy did not return requests for comment.

The Cuban government said recently that Mr. Obama’s brief rapprochement was positive for the country, but it was followed by eight years of aggression. Officials on Friday held a large protest outside the U.S. Embassy.

José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez, Cuba’s first ambassador to Washington when the embassies reopened in July 2015, said the United States was to blame for Cuba’s ills.

The Trump administration helped trigger mass arrivals at the southern border by shutting down visa operations, which forced Cubans to take irregular paths to the United States, he said.

The justifications for cutting back diplomatic relations, like accusing Cuba of sending troops to Venezuela or sickening embassy employees, were absurd, he said. “They simply lied,” he said.

Cuba’s inability to maintain its electric grid is directly tied to U.S. sanctions that cut the country’s income, he said.

“We’re concerned about the deterioration of the population’s standard of living, which is a fact, and it is tangible,” said Mr. Cabañas, who is now director of the government’s Center for International Policy Research.

“But at the same time, this has not been a country that sits on its hands waiting for someone to bring a solution,” he added. “We have lived through other previous cycles which impacted the quality of life, which many times were linked to hostile U.S. policy.”

Many Cubans have grown tired of their government blaming Washington, said Arianna R. Delgado, a makeup artist who left Cuba this year for Miami.

“Let’s be clear: Cuba was always bad, but now the situation is not that there’s less; it’s that there’s nothing,” she said through tears. “Now it’s a concentration camp, and the whole world has to know it.”

Rubén Salazar, 58, said people are cooking with charcoal, because there’s not enough gas.

“There’s no life here,” he said, “Cubans have no future.”

A pharmacy in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood doles out 200 numbered tickets the day before medicines are delivered. As a result, people must line up for hours, twice.

“Sometimes there are medicines that run out before they get to 200,” said Maritza González, 54, a teacher’s assistant, who needed an asthma inhaler. She’s found one only once this year. “Sometimes, they run out before they get to 50.”

On this day, she was No. 136.

With much fanfare, Ukraine was granted permission to fire Western long-range missiles at Russian military targets more than a month ago. But after initially firing a flurry of them, Ukraine has already slowed their use.

Kyiv is running out of missiles. It also might be running out of time: President-elect Donald J. Trump has said publicly that allowing U.S.-made long-range missiles inside Russia was a big mistake.

So far, the missiles have been effective in limited ways, but they have not changed the war’s trajectory, senior NATO officials said.

The war has also not escalated as some had feared. Although Russia launched a powerful new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile at a Ukrainian weapons facility after the first two volleys of Western long-range missiles, it has since responded to them with its usual mix of drones, missiles and threats.

Two U.S. officials said they believed Russia was trying to avoid escalating military operations in Ukraine, especially with the election of Mr. Trump, a longtime skeptic of the war, and given Russia’s recent battlefield successes. They spoke on the condition of anonymity given the political sensitivities.

Adm. Rob Bauer, NATO’s most senior military officer, said recently that the strikes by the long-range ballistic Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, had “seriously hit a number” of weapons factories and ammunition depots in Russia. He said that had forced Russia to move many logistics facilities farther back from the front.

“They don’t like the ATACMS coming in their own country, through the air — they don’t, because they are effective,” Admiral Bauer said in an interview in early December.

“That limits their ability to fight effectively at the front, and that’s what you want,” he added. “The question is, then, is it enough to win?”

In some ways, what has happened with the ATACMS — pronounced “attack ’ems” — is the story of what has happened with other Western weaponry in the war. Ukraine pressed for months and even years to get Western weapons: HIMARS rocket launchers, Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.

But by the time the West granted access to these weapons, Ukraine had lost more ground. And no weapon has been a silver bullet. Western officials also say Ukraine has relied too much on help from the West and hasn’t done enough to bolster its own war effort, especially in mobilizing enough troops.

The United States had long resisted sending Ukraine long-range ATACMS, with a range of 190 miles, fearing that their use deep inside nuclear-armed Russia would escalate the war.

In the spring, President Biden relented. The administration shipped Ukraine as many as 500 missiles from Pentagon stockpiles, the U.S. officials said. While Ukraine couldn’t use them in Russia, they fired them at targets in eastern Ukrainian territories controlled by Russia and in Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014 — aiming at hardened command and control posts, weapons storage areas and some other bunkers.

U.S. and NATO officials said those strikes had been effective, but also said that they felt Ukraine could have been more judicious in the number of missiles used and more selective with targeting.

The U.S. officials said Mr. Biden had justified granting permission on Nov. 17 to use the missiles in Russia because Moscow brought North Korean soldiers into the war.

There were caveats, though. U.S. officials said the weapons would initially be used mainly against Russian and North Korean troops in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukraine was trying to hold onto territory after a surprise Ukrainian offensive in August.

At that point, Ukraine had only “tens of the missiles” left — maybe about 50, the two U.S. officials said. It had no likelihood of getting more, they said. The limited American supplies had already been assigned for deployment in the Middle East and Asia. Officials in Britain, which allowed Ukraine to use its long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia after Mr. Biden’s decision, also said recently that it didn’t have many more to provide.

It is unlikely that Mr. Trump will step in to fill the gap. He recently told Time magazine that he disagreed “very vehemently” with Ukraine’s use of ATACMS in Russian territory and called Mr. Biden’s decision to provide them “foolish.” The next day, the Kremlin said Mr. Trump’s position “fully aligned” with Moscow.

Since the United States and Britain granted permission, Ukraine has launched at least a half-dozen missile strikes, using at least 31 ATACMS and 14 Storm Shadows, according to the Russian Defense Ministry and Russian military bloggers. The Ukrainian military does not comment on the use of the missiles, but neither the United States nor Ukraine has challenged those reports.

The most damaging attack appears to have been from Storm Shadows fired on Nov. 20 at a Russian command bunker near Maryino, Kursk, officials and analysts said.

On Nov. 21, Russia launched its new hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, or “hazelnut tree,” at a military facility in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. That was seen as a warning that Russia could hit any part of Europe with the new missile, a message to Europe and America about possible consequences.

Six days later, the Russian general who was the architect of the Ukraine invasion called Mr. Biden’s top military adviser to discuss concerns about escalation, insisting that its missile test had been long planned.

After that Nov. 27 call, Ukraine didn’t fire ATACMS or Storm Shadows for two weeks. Russia also launched few missile or drone attacks into Ukraine, although Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, threatened to launch the Оreshnik at the center of Кyiv if Ukraine didn’t stop using ATACMS in Russia.

Despite his public threats, Mr. Putin is trying to react carefully to Ukrainian operations, the U.S. officials said. They believe Moscow will most likely not respond to ATACMS strikes in a way that could risk drawing Washington deeper in the fight or put the new administration in an awkward position as it comes in.

Moscow could step up cyber or sabotage operations in Europe, but it is unlikely to directly target U.S. interests, the officials said.

Some analysts said Ukraine had slowed its missile use because it had initially targeted Russian facilities it had long wanted to hit. Now, with few missiles remaining, Ukraine is being more deliberate.

“We decided to wait and find high-value capability, and that’s natural,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies. “Don’t expect quick returns, because we need to preserve this capability and spend it judiciously and very wisely.”

On Dec. 11, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Ukraine had attacked a military airfield in the southern Russian city of Taganrog, a seaport on the Azov Sea, with six ATACMS, and it promised retaliation against Ukraine.

The United States then issued a rare warning: that Russia could be preparing tо fire an Оreshnik. Instead, Russia retaliated with a large-scale aerial attack, firing 93 missiles and almost 200 drones at Ukraine’s energy sector.

On Dec. 18, Ukraine fired six of the missiles and four Storm Shadows at one of the country’s largest chemical industry facilities in Russia’s Rostov region, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Two days later, Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Kyiv; Russian officials claimed they were in retaliation for the Western missile strikes.

Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.

A fragile cease-fire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has largely held for a month now, halting the deadliest war in years between the two sides and injecting a measure of calm into a region in turmoil.

The 60-day truce went into effect on Nov. 27 and has remained in place even as Hezbollah and Israel have traded attacks and exchanged accusations of violations. But a month on, there are concerns that the deal is not being implemented by either side in a timely manner.

As hundreds of thousands of displaced Lebanese return home, many are hoping the cease-fire will last, especially as their country grapples with a deep and prolonged economic crisis that was exacerbated by the war and years of political stagnation.

“We feel like we are coming back to life,” said Huda Hamzeh, whose fruit-and-vegetable stall in the capital, Beirut, has suffered from a lack of supply and fewer clients during the war.

“We just want forever peace.”

Iran-backed Hezbollah was considerably weakened by the war. Securing the cease-fire required the group to make serious concessions, such as pulling its fighters and weapons back from a zone in southern Lebanon that borders Israel.

The truce took effect more than a year after Hezbollah began attacking Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in Gaza that led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Israel retaliated by assassinating Hezbollah’s leadership and pummeling the group’s bases.

Shortly after the truce was announced, the Iran-backed alliance across the Middle East suffered another serious blow when the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was ousted by rebels. During Syria’s long civil war, Hezbollah had sent fighters to the neighboring country to defend Mr. al-Assad. And Syria was an important lifeline for Hezbollah, serving as a land bridge for shipments of weapons from Iran to Lebanese territory.

Israel has conducted a series of strikes on Lebanon since the cease-fire began, most of them concentrated in Hezbollah’s stronghold in south Lebanon. But this week, Israel attacked the eastern Bekaa region for the first time since the deal was agreed, Lebanon’s national news agency reported.

About two dozen people have been killed across Lebanon since the truce began, according to officials and media.

Israel attacked seven border crossings along the Syria-Lebanon border on Friday, according to Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, the commanding officer of the Israeli air force. Explaining the reason for the attack, he suggested that Hezbollah was testing Israel by trying to smuggle weapons in over the crossings.

Since the truce went into effect, the Israeli army has been conducting extensive operations in dozens of villages across southern Lebanon, saying it was dismantling tunnels, confiscating weapons and surveillance systems and demolishing a Hezbollah command center.

Lebanon’s foreign ministry filed an official complaint with the U.N. Security Council this week, saying Israel had launched more than 816 land and air attacks against Lebanon from Nov. 27 to Dec. 22. The violations “represent a serious threat to international efforts to achieve security in the region,” the ministry said.

More than 3,700 people in Lebanon were killed during the war and some 16,000 injured, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The conflict displaced about 1.3 million people in Lebanon, wiped out billions of dollars from the economy and devastated everything from farms to schools, businesses and hospitals.

In Israel, dozens of people living in frontline communities in the north near the Lebanese border were killed during the war, and more than 60,000 civilians were uprooted.

To end the cross-border fighting, the United States brokered a deal that requires Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters and weapons from southern Lebanon and Israeli troops to gradually return to their side of the border, both within 60 days.

Lebanese forces backed by UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, were supposed to deploy to the area south of the Litani River to maintain peace in the border zone. A committee, including France and the United States, has been set up to monitor compliance by all sides.

An Israeli army spokesman has also been warning residents against returning to dozens of villages across south Lebanon, without further explanation as to why they cannot go back. The move has incensed some of the displaced Lebanese.

So far, Khiam in southern Lebanon is the only town the Israeli military has vacated and the Lebanese army has deployed in, according to UNIFIL head of mission and force commander, Lt. Gen. Aroldo Lázaro.

General Lázaro said the peacekeeping force has conveyed its concern “at the continuing gunfire, demolitions, blasts and roadblocks” by Israeli forces around Naqoura, the town where the peacekeeping mission is headquartered.

Both UNIFIL and Lebanese officials have in the past week called on Israel to accelerate its withdrawal from south Lebanon.

While visiting Khiam this week, Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, called on the monitoring panel to pressure Israel to completely pull out of south Lebanon.

“There must be no justification for Israeli occupation of any part of our land,” Mr. Mikati said, according to the Lebanese national news agency.

It was not clear to what extent Hezbollah has withdrawn its fighters and weapons from southern Lebanon. Lebanese military and government officials did not respond to requests for comment on the question.

About 6,000 Lebanese Army soldiers have deployed to the south, and thousands more are expected in the coming months. Mr. Mikati has insisted the army is capable of securing the south and stabilizing the country.

But the Lebanese government is cash strapped, and observers say the army, which has long depended on donors, will need more support to bolster its presence in the south.

The army proved unable to control Hezbollah after the group’s monthlong war with Israel ended in 2006.

And while Hezbollah might remove its weapons from the south, it will be hard to uproot its fighters from the villages in the area, said Mounir Shehadeh, a retired general who previously oversaw the Lebanese government’s coordination with UNIFIL.

“How will they be expected to leave the region south of the Litani when it’s their towns and their properties?” Mr. Shehadeh said. “That wouldn’t make sense.”

The coming month will be a crucial test of whether the cease-fire can last more permanently.

For many Lebanese, the hope is that funds to support reconstruction efforts will soon be available. Mr. Mikati said this week that his Lebanese government was working with the World Bank, the European Union, Arab states and other countries to establish a fund to rebuild, especially in obliterated villages across the south.

General Lázaro said they were prioritizing road repairs, removing unexploded ordnance and expanding patrols so that more people could return home.

“The necessary long-term solutions are political,” he said in written responses to questions. “There is ultimately no military solution.”