The bungalow was built for a Dutch trader in colonial times, but it has become part of modern Singaporean lore. It was where Lee Kuan Yew lived for decades, where he started his political party and where he began building Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.

Mr. Lee had said that he wanted the house to be demolished after he died rather than preserved as a museum, with the public “trampling” through his private quarters.

But the wording of his will left the property’s fate in limbo and caused a rift between his three children — one that reflects an intensifying debate over Singapore’s semi-authoritarian political system.

Now, an extraordinary voice has joined those who complain that the city-state’s prosperity has come at the cost of a government that lacks accountability: one of Mr. Lee’s own children.

“The idea that one good man at the center can control this, and you just rely on his benevolence to ensure that everything is right, doesn’t work,” Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest child, who wants to honor his father’s wishes for the house, said in a recent interview with The New York Times from London.

After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, the eldest child, by then Singapore’s prime minister, argued that his father’s instructions for the bungalow were ambiguous. His siblings wanted it demolished, though one continued to live in the house, and as long as she did, its fate remained unresolved.

Then, after her death in October, the dispute resurfaced — and escalated sharply. Lee Hsien Yang, called Yang by his parents and siblings, announced that he had obtained political asylum in Britain because he feared being unfairly imprisoned in Singapore over the disagreement.

Yang said his brother — Lee Hsien Loong, who stepped down in May as prime minister — had abused his power in the conflict over the house.

Yang, 67, described what he called a pattern of persecution by the Singapore government in recent years. In 2020, his son was charged with contempt of court for criticizing Singapore’s courts in a private Facebook post. That year, his wife, a lawyer who had arranged for the witnesses at the signing of the patriarch’s will, was barred from practicing law for 15 months. Then the couple faced a police inquiry about lying under oath. In 2022, they left Singapore.

In October, Yang announced that Britain had granted his asylum request, ruling that he and his wife “have a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore cannot return to your country.”

Singapore’s government rejected the claims, saying that the couple was free to return home. It said it was accountable to voters and an independent judiciary. Yang, it added, was engaged in “an extravagant personal vendetta” against his brother, Loong.

Loong, 72, who now holds the title of senior minister, declined to comment because he has recused himself from the matter of the house.

For Yang, the yearslong dispute is proof that there are “fundamental problems in the way Singapore is governed and run.”

Yang acknowledged that his father had detained opposition politicians and union leaders, but said that he “had the best interests of the country at heart.”

The People’s Action Party has governed Singapore with a tight grip for nearly 70 years. And years after the founding father’s death, it continues to praise his legacy.

This, some analysts say, has left Singapore at a crossroads.

“Are we able to move on?” said Ja Ian Chong, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore. “Or are we still stuck with this relatively brittle, big-man kind of approach to politics?”

Lee Kuan Yew transformed a colonial outpost into an economic powerhouse in a generation. He made no bones about intervening in the lives of Singaporeans and prioritized the community over the individual — a notion that some observers say points to the irony of the family feud.

He “understood that the government would have to preserve the house if it decided that was in the public interest,” Loong wrote in a 2016 letter to Lawrence Wong, who was part of a government committee created to consider options for the property, and is now prime minister.

That panel concluded that the bungalow had historical significance, and that Lee Kuan Yew had been amenable to its preservation. But polls indicate that most Singaporeans want it torn down. In October, the government said it was again studying whether to preserve the circa 1898 house.

‘The Best Combination’

For decades, Lee Kuan Yew’s family appeared to be as orderly as the state he ran. His wife, Kwa Geok Choo, was in charge of the household at 38 Oxley Road, in one of Singapore’s most expensive areas.

In the 1950s, Mr. Lee and a group of friends set up his political party, the P.A.P., in the basement dining room. Most of the house was spartan. The furniture was old and mismatched; the family bathed by scooping water from earthenware vessels. Even after the sons had married and moved out, they gathered every Sunday for family lunch.

Visitors were quick to notice that only one child’s photographs were displayed: Loong’s.

“He got the best combination of our two DNAs,” Mr. Lee would tell local journalists. “The others have also combinations of both, but not in as advantageous a way as he has. It’s the luck of the draw.”

“He was the apple of my mother’s eye, and she had ambitions for him,” Yang said of Loong. “I was never antagonistic with him, neither did I have any jealousy or envy of him.”

In 2004, Loong became prime minister. Yang at the time was the chief executive of Singapore’s state-owned phone company and said that he harbored no political ambitions. That would change.

Demolition Debate

After Mr. Lee’s wife died, he continued to live in the house with his daughter, Dr. Lee Wei Ling, a neurologist. Mr. Lee died in March 2015, and his children gathered at the bungalow the following month for the reading of his will.

The house was left to Loong, but Ling could continue to live there. Once she moved out, the house was to be torn down. And if for some reason, the house was not demolished, he did not want it to be open to the public.

Loong was blindsided and would later say publicly that he did not know about this final will. When the will was being discussed, he became “aggressive” and “threatening,” his sister wrote in a previously undisclosed email to a friend in May 2015. She added that Loong told his younger siblings that if they pursued the demolition clause, the government would intervene and declare the house a national monument.

It was the last time Loong spoke with Ling and Yang, according to Yang.

The next day, Loong raised the matter in Parliament. He said that he wanted to see his father’s wishes carried out, but that “it will be up to the government of the day to consider the matter.”

A few months later, it appeared that the siblings had reached a resolution. Yang bought the house from Loong for an undisclosed price.

But soon, the government formed a committee to explore options for the house. That marked the start of Yang’s troubles with the state.

New Opposition Party

Loong told the panel that he was “very concerned” that the demolition clause in the will was “reinserted under dubious circumstances.” He asked whether there was a conflict of interest for Lee Suet Fern, Yang’s wife, who had organized the signing of the will.

To the younger siblings, it appeared that the committee was “conducting an inquisition into the will,” Yang said, pointing out that a court had declared it as binding.

In a joint statement in 2017, Yang and Ling said that they did not trust their brother as a leader. They said that Loong and his wife were milking “Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy for their own political purposes,” and harbored dynastic ambitions for their son.

Loong responded in Parliament, saying that he did not give instructions to the committee and that his only dealings with the panel were his responses to their requests in writing.

He has denied grooming his son for office.

Then the government accused Yang’s wife of professional misconduct over the will. A disciplinary tribunal ruled against her, saying she and her husband had built an “elaborate edifice of lies” during the proceedings.

A three-judge panel then ruled that Yang’s wife, Ms. Lee, gave “a contrived and ultimately untrue account of her role” in the will, and suspended her for 15 months for misconduct. But it also ruled that she had not been acting as Mr. Lee’s lawyer, and that he had been content with his will.

For Yang, the People’s Action Party had lost its way. He joined the Progress Singapore Party, a new opposition group, and considered running for president, a ceremonial post.

In 2022, the police asked to interview him and his wife, saying they had lied in the misconduct proceedings. The couple agreed to be questioned at a later date, but soon left Singapore. It was not until 2023 that a minister revealed in Parliament that they were being investigated by the authorities.

In October, Yang organized Ling’s funeral from afar. Loong was not invited.

The walls of 38 Oxley Road are now cracked, and rust has eroded part of the gate. When a reporter rang the doorbell on a recent Sunday, a housekeeper answered and said nobody was home.

The Ukrainian authorities on Saturday announced the capture of two North Korean soldiers in Russia, saying they were the first to be taken alive since Pyongyang sent troops to assist Moscow’s war effort.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said the two soldiers, who were wounded, were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where Ukrainian troops have been fighting to hold on to territory seized during a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.

In a post on various social media channels, Mr. Zelensky said the soldiers had received medical care, as required by the Geneva Conventions, and had been taken to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for interrogation.

Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, said one of the soldiers was captured on Thursday. It did not provide details on where, or say when the second was taken prisoner, but said they were the first North Koreans fighting against Ukraine in Kursk to be captured.

Their capture, the SBU said in a lengthy statement, provides “indisputable evidence of North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war against our country.”

The Kremlin has not directly confirmed that North Korean troops are fighting alongside Moscow’s forces.

Interrogations are being carried out through Korean translators in coordination with South Korea’s intelligence service, according to the SBU. South Korea’s embassy in Ukraine did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither Russia nor North Korea had any immediate comment.

Ukraine’s intelligence agency and Mr. Zelensky both shared photographs and videos of the two soldiers, showing one with bandages around his jaw and the other with bandaged hands.

According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a “public curiosity,” a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting.

Fierce fighting has raged in Kursk as Russian forces try to rout Ukrainian troops and drive them back across the border. Bolstered by more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers, Russian troops have regained roughly half of the territory they lost in the area.

But Ukraine has hung on to more than 150 square miles of land inside Russia. The White House has said North Korea’s forces are suffering heavy casualties.

Last month, the Biden administration said more than 1,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded fighting Ukrainian troops in Kursk over the course of a week — with some choosing suicide over surrender.

South Korean intelligence officials have said that the deployment of North Korean troops was so rushed — with soldiers thrust into battle after learning a smattering of military terms, like “open fire” and “artillery” in Russian — that it could take time for them to properly integrate with Moscow’s forces.

The capture of the two soldiers could provide Ukraine with valuable intelligence on Russia’s military operations in Kursk and the interplay with North Korean soldiers.

In its statement on Sunday, Ukraine’s intelligence agency said one of the captured soldiers told interrogators that he thought he was being sent to Russia for training — not to fight Ukraine. That soldier, according to the SBU, was carrying a Russian military ID card.

Mr. Zelensky alluded to that point in his nightly address on Sunday, saying that “Russians issue their documents to these Koreans, but they will not deceive anyone.”

Ivan Nechepurenko and Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.

Israeli soldiers have raided Syrian border villages, prompting nervous residents to huddle in their homes. They have captured the country’s highest peak, have set up roadblocks between Syrian towns and now overlook local villages from former Syrian military outposts.

The stunning downfall of Syria’s longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad, closed a chapter in the country’s decade-long civil war. But it also marked the start of an Israeli incursion into the border region, which Israel has called a temporary defensive move to protect its own security.

Thousands of Syrians now live in areas at least partly controlled by Israeli forces, leaving many anxious over how long the campaign will last. Israeli troops have detained some residents and opened fire during at least two protests against the raids, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent monitor.

At least some Syrians now say they fear the Israeli presence could become a prolonged military occupation.

“We’re the only part of the country that didn’t truly manage to celebrate the fall of the Assad regime — because even as the tyrant fell, the Israeli military came,” lamented Shaher al-Nuaimi, who lives in the border village of Khan Arnabeh, which has been raided by the Israeli military.

Israel and Syria have fought multiple conflicts, but for decades, the border separating the two has been largely quiet. They last went to war in 1973, when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day. Afterward, both sides agreed to create a demilitarized buffer zone patrolled by United Nations peacekeepers that served as a de facto border.

But when Syrian rebels drove Mr. al-Assad from power on Dec. 8, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ordered his country’s troops to “take over” the buffer zone, home to a number of Syrian villages. He called it a temporary move to “ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border with Israel” amid Syria’s internal upheaval and after the Hamas-led surprise attack from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, that left some 1,200 people dead in Israel.

Israeli forces quickly seized the peak of Mount Hermon, the highest mountain in Syria, and advanced along the length of the buffer zone and beyond it. Around the same time, Israel said it conducted hundreds of airstrikes around the country targeting fighter jets, tanks, missiles and other weapons belonging to Mr. al-Assad’s government.

The continued military campaign, particularly the ground operation in the de facto border area, has prompted international accusations that Israel is violating the decades-old cease-fire. Several groups still hold territory in parts of the country in addition to the new Syrian government in Damascus, with Turkish forces in effect controlling areas along the northern border and a Kurdish autonomous region in the northeast.

The Israeli military is operating in the border area “now similarly to the West Bank, in that it can go in and go out anywhere it wants and arrest whomever it wants,” said Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in a phone interview.

Some Syrians said they hoped for good relations with Israel, citing their shared animosity toward Iran, which backed Mr. al-Assad’s regime. Israel also provided medical care to some Syrians inside Israeli-held territory during the decade-long Syrian civil war, including those from the border area.

“The medical treatment broke through some of the enmity that people felt,” said Dirar al-Bashir, a local leader in the border region of Quneitra.

But Mr. al-Bashir and others also said that if Israel’s operation became a protracted occupation, that would ignite further violence in a country exhausted by years of civil war. Israel already controls much of the Golan Heights, territory once held by Syria that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community.

“We want peace, but the decision makers in Israel seem to think that they will achieve everything by force,” said Arsan Arsan, a resident of a Syrian village outside the buffer zone who has helped coordinate between U.N. officials and local residents. “If they push people into a corner, things will explode, just as they did in Gaza.”

Israeli officers have also entered villages to meet with local leaders and demand that they gather up all of the weaponry in their towns and hand it over to the Israeli military, according to seven residents. The towns mostly complied with the order, leading Israeli soldiers to take out rifles by the truckload, they said.

Israel did not respond to requests for comment on specific accusations by local residents. But the Israeli military said on Wednesday that its forces have seized and destroyed weapons that formerly belonged to the Syrian army, including anti-tank missiles and explosive devices.

Syrian residents and local leaders in the border area also said that Israeli military vehicles have damaged water pipes and electrical cables around some villages, causing blackouts and water cuts.

Turki al-Mustafa, 62, said there had been no running water in his town, Hamidiyeh, since Israeli troops entered the buffer zone. He said that troops had allowed some water to be trucked in, but had set up roadblocks around the town, ordering residents to enter and leave only at designated hours.

Cellphone reception has also become spotty in the buffer zone since the Israeli incursion, according to Ahmad Khreiwish, 37, a resident of the town of Rafeed, making communication difficult.

“Everyone is now living with this dread about the Israeli military,” he said. “We don’t want things to escalate between us. We just want safety and security.”

Some Syrians have protested the Israeli military presence, organizing demonstrations in at least four villages. Two residents of the town of Sweisa said Israeli soldiers had opened fire and injured several people during a protest there on Dec. 25.

“They were unarmed and chanting slogans against Israel’s deployment in the area,” one of the residents, Ziyad al-Fuheili, 43, said of the protesters. “At first, the soldiers shot in the air, but when the crowd kept marching toward them, they fired at the demonstrators.”

Israel’s military said that its forces had fired “warning shots” in Sweisa and that it was looking into reports that civilians had been harmed.

Even before Mr. al-Assad’s fall, Israel worried about Iran-backed militias gaining a foothold along the Syrian border. Israeli warplanes regularly struck Iranian officials and their allies in Syria as part of the yearslong shadow war between the two sides.

The decision to send in troops reflects concerns about the prospect of surprise attacks on Israel, like the one that prompted the 1973 war, as well as the 2023 assault from Gaza. That prompted Israel’s wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with Israeli airstrikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria well before Mr. al-Assad’s ouster.

“Israel is closely monitoring the situation in Syria, and will not jeopardize its own security,” Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, said this month. “We will not allow another Oct. 7 on any front.”

Syria’s new leadership has criticized the Israeli military moves. Critics abroad, including several Arab states and France, have called Israel’s actions a violation of the decades-long truce and called on Israel to withdraw. Egypt accused Israel of “exploiting Syria’s current instability to expand its territorial control and impose a new reality on the ground.”

Israel’s officials say they will only withdraw after “new arrangements” are in place along the border. Given the chaotic internal situation in Syria, that could take months or even longer.

In Kodana, a small Syrian village just outside the buffer zone, Israeli armored vehicles arrived just a few days after Mr. al-Assad’s fall, according to the mayor, Maher al-Tahan. He said the Israeli troops told village leaders to broadcast a message over mosque loudspeakers ordering Kodana’s roughly 800 residents to turn over any weapons.

Since then, the Israeli military has brought generators and set up makeshift barracks in the hills overlooking Kodana, he said. But since most of Kodana’s wells sit on those hilltops, he and other residents said, they have turned to buying expensive trucked-in water rather than pumping it out of the ground.

“The Israeli military must leave as soon as possible,” Mr. al-Tahan said. “As long as they stay here, the problems on both sides will simply continue to grow.”

The flight recorder of the Jeju Air passenger jet that crashed last month, killing ​179 people, stopped recording for​ its last four minutes, South Korean officials said on Saturday, a significant setback for investigators.

Data extracted from the so-called black box, consisting of the ​cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, is generally crucial in investigations of aviation accidents. Officials in South Korea, who have been working with the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board​, have said that the ​flight data for the plane’s last four minutes​ would be ​especially important in this crash.​

But on Saturday, South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that for reasons ​not yet determined, the black box of the Boeing 737-800 had stopped recording then.

“We plan to investigate why the data was not recorded,” the ministry said in a news release. ​It also said that other data and analysis would be used to try to understand what happened in last month’s disaster.

Jeju Air Flight 7C2216​, coming from Bangkok with 181 people on board, was preparing to land at Muan International Airport in southwestern South Korea at 8:59 a.m. on Dec. 29 when ​its pilot reported, “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” and, “Bird strike, bird strike,” according to officials. The pilot also told the air traffic control tower that he was “going around,” meaning he would abort his first landing attempt and circle in the air to prepare for a second one.

But he apparently did not have enough time to make a full circle. Instead, the plane approached the runway from the opposite direction and landed on its belly, without its landing gear deployed. Seeming unable to control its speed, it overshot the runway. Four minutes after the Mayday emergency report, the plane slammed into a concrete structure off the southern end of the runway and exploded into flames.​

A key question has been: What happened during ​those four minutes?

“The black box data is crucial in ​the investigation,” said Hwang Ho-won, the chairman of the Korea Association for Aviation Security. “If the​ investigators don’t have it, it will create a serious problem ​for them.”

The missing data adds mystery to the crash, which was the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil and the deadliest worldwide since that of Lion Air Flight 610 in 2018, when all 189 people on board died.

Mr. Hwang said black boxes could be damaged by impact, fire or prolonged exposure to deep water. But it was hard to explain how the Jeju Air black box failed to record in its last four minutes, he said.​

He said that investigators might be able to reconstruct part of the conversation inside the cockpit based on interviews with control tower officials. Radar and other data suggested that the plane tried ​but failed to gain altitude after reporting a bird strike and hurried to land​, Mr. Hwang said.

Investigators have said they were looking into various possibilities, including that of the plane losing use of one or both of its engines in its last minutes.

Most of the 179 ​people who died were South Ko​reans returning home from a Christmas holiday in Thailand. The two survivors were both crew members found with injuries in the plane’s tail section.

The disaster prompted a national outpouring of grief, with memorials set up across ​South Korea, and came as the country was also dealing with a political crisis set off by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived imposition of martial law and his impeachment by Parliament.

Israeli warplanes bombed ports and a power plant in Yemeni territory controlled by the Houthis on Friday, the Israeli military said, in the latest attempt to force the Iranian-backed militant group to stop firing at Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea.

Israel has escalated its strikes on the Houthis in recent weeks in response to repeated attacks by the Yemeni militia, which has been launching missiles and drones against Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The United States and Britain have also struck Yemen repeatedly in an effort to secure international waterways from Houthi attacks, including new American strikes on Wednesday.

But it was far from clear whether Israel and its allies could successfully compel the Houthis to end their attacks on Israel and on ships through a bombing campaign. Months of Israeli and American airstrikes have failed to deter the well-equipped militia from conducting attacks.

The Israeli military said it had bombed the Hezyaz power station near Sana, the Houthi-controlled capital, and the Red Sea ports of Hudaydah and Ras Isa. The power station is not far from where thousands of Yemenis had gathered in a weekly rally in solidarity with Palestinians, and Ras Isa is Yemen’s main oil export terminal.

Experts have warned that attacking ports like Hudaydah, a major conduit for essential supplies in northern Yemen, could further worsen what is already one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Rocked by civil war for more than a decade, millions of people in Yemen face the threat of malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it had struck targets at sites that were being used by the Houthis for military purposes. More than 20 aircraft took part in the operation, which required in-flight refueling, and dropped about 50 munitions, said an military official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocol.

One worker at the Hezyaz power station was wounded, according to al-Masira, the Houthi-affiliated broadcaster. There were no other immediate reports of serious casualties.

“The port of Hudaydah is paralyzed and the port of Ras Isa is ablaze,” Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said in a statement. “The message is clear: Anyone who harms Israel will be struck tenfold.”

The Houthis, who control much of western Yemen, are more than 1,000 miles from Israeli territory and have survived numerous efforts to defeat them since they rose to power in a civil war that began in 2014. The United States designates the Houthis as a terrorist group, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, U.S. allies in the region, intervened in the civil war to fight against the Houthis.

Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 prompted the Gaza war, the Houthis have fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. They have also hampered global shipping by firing at passing commercial freighters in a self-declared effort to enforce a blockade on Israel.

Over the past two months, the Houthis have stepped up their attacks, sending Israelis across central Israel rushing for bomb shelters late at night as air-raid sirens blare. On Thursday, Houthi militants fired three drones at Israeli territory; the Israeli military said it intercepted them all.

Israel has bombarded Yemen several times in response — sending its jets more than 1,000 miles to do so — but has struggled to decisively subdue the Houthis.

After the strikes on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, said that “the Houthis are paying, and will continue to pay, a heavy price for their aggression against us.”

But Israel’s options against its faraway enemy are limited. Israel’s security establishment has never prioritized Yemen and for years did not intensively focus on gathering intelligence on the Houthis, experts say.

The Houthis rarely expend their munitions in massive barrages, instead firing a missile or a drone at a time. They could likely maintain that pace for a long time, military experts say. Even if there were a cease-fire in Gaza, the Houthis might continue firing in an attempt to leverage their newfound significance on the regional stage, they say.

On Friday, Mr. Katz threatened to kill Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, as well as its other commanders.

“No one is immune,” Mr. Katz said. “We will hunt you down and destroy the terror infrastructure which you built. Israel’s long arm will reach you, wherever you are.”

Israel’s intelligence agencies spent months hunting for Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in the relatively small enclave of the Gaza Strip. Experts say it would be much more difficult to locate Houthi leaders in the much larger and less well-surveilled territory of Yemen.

Here are other developments in the region:

• An Israeli airstrike on Friday in southern Lebanon killed at least two people, according to the country’s health ministry, a day after Lebanon elected a new president amid resurgent hopes of peace and stability. The attack, which Lebanon’s state-run news agency said targeted a vehicle, comes with just over two weeks to go until a cease-fire agreement expires between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Amid accusations of cease-fire violations by both sides, Lebanon has reported to the U.N. Security Council that Israel had launched over 800 “ground and air attacks” since the cease-fire came into effect in November.

Johnatan Reiss, Euan Ward, Stephen Castle and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia remained open to a meeting between President Vladimir V. Putin and President-elect Donald J. Trump, but that any concrete steps to set up such talks could be made only after Mr. Trump is sworn into office on Jan. 20.

Responding to comments made on Thursday by Mr. Trump, who said that Mr. Putin wanted to meet him to discuss the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s spokesman reaffirmed Russia’s longstanding official position that Moscow was ready to talk.

“We need a mutual desire and political willingness to engage in a dialogue,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters. “We see that Mr. Trump also declares his readiness to solve issues via dialogue. We welcome that.”

Mr. Peskov added that the Kremlin’s understanding is that there is a “mutual readiness for a meeting,” but, he said, “it looks like things will start to move after Trump enters the Oval Office.”

He did not confirm that Mr. Putin had requested a meeting with Mr. Trump or that one was being set up, as Mr. Trump said on Thursday night.

A spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry said Friday that Kyiv expected President Volodymyr Zelensky would also meet with Mr. Trump after the inauguration.

The spokesman, Heorhii Tykhyi, said Ukraine was preparing for talks at “the highest levels.” As for Mr. Trump’s remarks about potential talks with Russia’s leader, Mr. Tykhyi said that the president-elect had “previously mentioned plans for such a meeting, so we see nothing new in this.”

“Our stance is clear: everyone in Ukraine wants to end the war on terms that are fair to Ukraine,” he said at a news briefing. “We believe President Trump is also committed to ending the war. Therefore, the priority now is for a meeting between our presidents.”

“The most important thing for us is to collaborate with America in the pursuit of peace,” he added.

While asserting its territorial claim over five regions in Ukraine, the Kremlin has been insisting that it would prefer diplomacy over war.

Ukraine and some of its Western allies have questioned Russia’s seriousness in offering to negotiate, and said that the Kremlin’s conditions actually represent a demand for Ukrainian capitulation.

Russia has been largely isolated from the West for almost three years since it invaded Ukraine. For Mr. Putin, a meeting with the American president would represent a chance to establish relations with a friendlier American administration.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that he could resolve the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours, without saying how, and at times even said he could do so before taking office. But this week he suggested that it could take up to six months.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said that he was sympathetic with the Russian position that Ukraine should never join NATO, one of the main conditions put forward by the Kremlin to end the war.

Mr. Trump’s victory in November produced a wave of cautious optimism that the war could end soon, even if in an unstable cease-fire. But analysts have said that the process will be hard and tedious, and many in Ukraine and elsewhere fear that Mr. Trump might want to push through a deal at the expense of its capitulation.

In Russia, Giorgy Bovt, a political analyst, said that if a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin happened too early, when “the conditions for peace have not yet matured,” it could “lead to greater escalation.”

“Both warring parties are still betting on continuing military action,” Mr. Bovt wrote in a post on Telegram, a popular messaging app. “They do not consider their forces exhausted.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on social media that “the higher the expectations” from the meeting “the riskier the game, most of all for Trump.”

Cassandra Vinograd contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.