Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago convinced Europe’s leaders that they needed to spend more money on defense. On Monday, leaders from across the European Union and Britain met in Brussels to debate a vexing question: how to pay for it.

It was a concern made more acute by President Trump’s return to the White House.

The United States is the largest military funder of Ukraine’s war effort, but Mr. Trump has suggested he will rapidly withdraw U.S. financial and military support and leave it to the Europeans. He has also insisted that NATO nations ramp up defense outlays to 5 percent of their annual economic output, a drastic increase from the 3 percent or 3.5 percent NATO plans to make its goal at its next summit meeting this summer. The United States itself spends only about 3.4 percent of gross domestic product on defense.

And security is only one of the arenas in which the Trump administration is striking a more confrontational stance. Mr. Trump pledged on Sunday night to slap new tariffs on European trading partners “pretty soon.” That is intensifying a sense in Europe that it needs to be able to fend more for itself in a world where the United States is a less reliable partner.

With the war in Ukraine, the European Union, which was founded on free trade and termed itself a “peace project,” has become more committed to deterrence and defense. It is now scrambling to expand its defense industries and make spending more efficient and collaborative. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain attended Monday’s gathering, the first time since Britain left the European Union that a British leader has met with the 27 leaders of the bloc in Brussels.

“Across Europe, we must shoulder more of the burden now — because it is our burden to carry,” Mr. Starmer said during a news conference on Monday.

Within the European Union, part of the ongoing debate centers on whether the bloc will be able to raise more money to pay for defense through common debt, as it did to fight Covid. But the issue is thorny: Such joint fund-raising might impede the efforts of member countries to meet the individual demands that the NATO alliance is already making of them in terms of raising military budgets. Of the 27 E.U. countries that will meet in the closed-door session on Monday, 23 are members of NATO.

NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, has already set capability targets for the first time since the Cold War. The American general has given NATO member countries specific requirements for equipment and force levels, as well as instructions on how to respond in case of a Russian invasion.

There is consensus among officials and analysts that Europe lacks crucial elements of defense like integrated air and missile defense, long-range precision artillery and missiles, satellites, and air-to-air refueling tankers that only the United States currently provides. Replacing those systems would take Europe at least five or perhaps 10 years, the analysts say.

European nations also want to reduce duplication. Ukraine, for example, has been sent at least 17 different kinds of howitzers, not all of which use the same type of shell.

As Russia threatens from the East and Mr. Trump’s support wavers from the West, Europe’s leaders agree that they need a plan to both coordinate and expand their military resources. But diverging national interests and competing budget priorities mean that reshaping European defense will be difficult, expensive and lengthy.

And important countries on the eastern flank, like Poland and the Baltic nations, want to do whatever they can to keep the United States engaged in NATO and the defense of Europe.

The summit Monday was a first step. The E.U. leaders discussed military financing and joint procurement, and were joined by Mr. Starmer and by Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general. The goal was to hash out priorities, which will inform the continent’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and its new defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, as they work to draw up a more concrete plan, especially for weapons production.

They are expected to publish a paper on the topic in March, with a more concrete plan expected early this summer.

The meeting also had symbolic importance, defense analysts said, as a demonstration that Europe is taking seriously a long-term threat from Russia and the need to reduce its military dependency on the United States.

“This is critical for Europeans,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, acting president of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank. “They don’t have a choice, because war is taking place on their own continent.”

Deterring Russia, which wants to split the United States from NATO and divide both the alliance and the European Union, is “a generational struggle,” she said. “But our political leaders have failed to explain to a younger generation why the alliance is important and why it’s important for Ukraine to win this war,” she said.

Europe’s relationship with Washington were also on Monday’s agenda, including how to cope with Mr. Trump’s demands. Officials discussed his insistence that he wants to acquire Greenland. The island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, both an E.U. member state and a NATO ally. Danish and Greenlandic leaders have been clear that the territory is not for sale and will not be handed over to the United States.

“It’s part of our territory, and it’s not for sale,” Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, told reporters on Monday. “If this is about securing our part of the world, we can find a way forward.”

The Greenland issue underscores just how drastically Washington’s relationship to Europe may be changing, as Mr. Trump seems more willing to put economic and military pressure on U.S. allies than on its adversaries.

“There are clearly new challenges, and growing uncertainty,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said at a news conference on Monday night. “When targeted unfairly or arbitrarily, the European Union will respond firmly.”

But she also emphasized that the U.S. is a key partner for Europe, and that the relationship between the two is essential for peace and prosperity.

Leaders like Mr. Rutte have emphasized that the continent cannot realistically go it alone without the United States when it comes to defense the goal is to be more self-sufficient.

E.U. nations have increased military outlays in recent years. They spent an estimated $340 billion on defense in 2024, a 30 percent increase compared with 2021. At least 23 of NATO’s 32 members now spend 2 percent or more of their gross domestic product on defense, in line with NATO goals. Mr. Rutte has made it clear that 2 percent is a floor, not a ceiling, and that a new, higher standard will be set this year.

With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia busy with Ukraine and his military battered, European and NATO officials believe there is a window of perhaps three to seven years before Mr. Putin might be tempted to test the NATO alliance.

Finding a fix that boosts and coordinates European defense outlays will not be easy.

“The logic tells us that you need to have joint procurement,” said Janis Emmanouilidis, director of studies at the European Policy Center. But there are barriers, including a lack of trust between nations and conflicting national self-interest. “It is protecting national industry, it is protecting the sovereign right to make decisions,” he said.

When it comes to joint procurement, there is also the issue of how to finance it. Joint funding programs are clearly on the agenda, but exactly what that could look like varies.

It could mean a collective pot of money like Europe raised during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Funding could also come from a vehicle supported by the European Investment Bank, which is the lending arm of the European Union.

In a joint letter last week, 19 European countries said the bank “should continue exploring further ways to take an even stronger role in providing investment funding and leveraging private funding for the security and defense sector.”

The E.U. is willing to work with the bank to “increase the flexibility of lending practices,” Ms. Von der Leyen said Monday night.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from London.

As President Trump was locked in a war of words with the leader of Colombia over the military deportation of migrants, China’s ambassador to Colombia declared that relations between Beijing and Bogotá were at their “best moment” in decades.

Zhu Jingyang, the ambassador, later said that it was a coincidence that he posted his comment on social media last week, a day after Mr. Trump said he would slap tariffs on Colombia. But the public outreach suggested that Beijing saw an opportunity to strengthen its hand in the high-stakes superpower rivalry between China and the United States.

Two weeks into the second Trump administration, Mr. Trump’s aggressive “America First” foreign policy holds both promise and peril for Beijing.

The perils have always been clear: more tariffs, and the risk of a wider trade war. This weekend, Mr. Trump imposed an additional 10 percent tariffs on goods imported from China, saying the tariffs were a response to China’s failure to curb fentanyl exports. He could answer any retaliation from China with even higher levies.

But even as Beijing calculates the impact of the tariffs on China’s weak economy, it is surely also taking stock of the openings that Mr. Trump’s other moves are giving China.

Mr. Trump has alienated U.S. allies and partners like Canada and Mexico by imposing steep tariffs on their exports. He has weakened America’s global authority by cutting foreign aid and withdrawing from the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement, a U.N. climate pact.

If the second Trump term marks the sunset of Pax Americana, analysts say China will almost certainly use the opportunity to try to reshape the world in its favor. Beijing, which has long accused Washington of using its dominance to contain China’s rise, has tried to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies, including the European Union, Japan and Australia.

“The Chinese are well aware of the damage Trump has done and is doing to U.S. credibility and influence globally. In fact, it is unfolding faster than even Beijing expected,” said Evan S. Medeiros, a professor of Asian studies at Georgetown University who served as an Asia adviser to President Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump’s threats to take the Panama Canal and Greenland, as well as to annex Canada as America’s 51st state could normalize a world order in which might makes right. That is an approach that is familiar to Beijing, even if Chinese officials rhetorically maintain that it will never seek hegemony or expansion.

If the United States strong-arms Panama over its crucial waterway, or forces Denmark to give up the resource-rich territory of Greenland, it sends a signal to China that when it comes to its own claims to the self-governing island of Taiwan and much of the South China Sea, coercion trumps cooperation.

“China was certainly never going to give up Taiwan or the South China Sea, but with President Trump doing what he’s doing, China is even more determined to safeguard its interests there, that’s for sure,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.

Mr. Wang said China has been encouraged by the first two weeks of the new administration despite the tariffs and appointment of hawkish advisers such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.

Rather than coming out aggressively to confront China, Mr. Trump has presented himself as someone willing to negotiate and potentially cut a deal with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. Mr. Trump has floated the idea of tying tariffs to the fate of TikTok, which he has said should be half-owned by an American company.

Another potential area for deal making is Ukraine. Mr. Trump has said China should help end Russia’s war in the Eastern European country. China, as Russia’s biggest provider of economic and material support, could conceivably pressure President Vladimir V. Putin to come to the negotiation table.

“Trump wants China’s help to end the war in Ukraine,” Mr. Wang said. “China is one of the best partners for him to do that.”

But with so many competing interests, cooperation would be difficult. China has avoided criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, taking the position that Russia has a right to protect its national security. Ukraine will not accept China as a peace broker because of China’s pro-Russian position, said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing. Mr. Putin, on the other hand, will not want to look subordinate to China, he said, while Mr. Trump has “no real stomach” to see China lauded for playing a significant role.

On the issue of tariffs, Beijing has to decide if it can afford to escalate a trade war with the United States. On Sunday, it vowed to respond to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by filing a case with the World Trade Organization and with countermeasures to be specified later.

Beijing could hit back with tariffs. A more drastic approach would be for China to engage in “supply chain warfare”: halting shipments to the United States of materials and equipment critical to U.S. industry. In early December, China stopped the export to the United States of minerals like antimony and gallium, which are needed to manufacture some semiconductors.

The risk to China is that a trade war would be more damaging to itself than it would be for the United States. Exports, and the construction of factories to make them, are among the few strengths now in China’s economy. As a result, China’s trade surplus — the amount by which its exports exceeded imports — reached almost $1 trillion last year.

China has also not yet said how it will respond to a potentially farther-reaching provision in the fine print of Mr. Trump’s executive order on Saturday: the elimination of duty-free handling for packages worth up to $800 per day for each American. Factories all over China have shifted in recent years to e-commerce shipments directly to American homes, so as to bypass the many tariffs collected on clothing and other goods that are imported and sold through American stores.

In the race for global influence, some argue that the Trump administration’s move to freeze most foreign aid, which has disrupted aid programs around the world, has already benefited China.

In regions like Southeast Asia, where attitudes toward the United States have hardened because of Washington’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, the halt in funding has raised questions about American reliability.

“China needs to do nothing in the meantime, and yet, somehow, net-net, look like the good guy in all of this,” said Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst on China at the Eurasia Group.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, defended the importance of soft power to America’s standing.

“If you don’t get involved in the world and you don’t have programs in Africa, where China is trying to buy the whole continent, we’re making a mistake,” he said last month.

Through nearly 16 months of war in Gaza, politicians and analysts debated competing proposals for the territory’s postwar governance, but no clear direction emerged while the fighting continued.

Now, as a fragile cease-fire holds and as Israel and Hamas prepare for negotiations to extend the truce, four rival models for Gaza’s future have begun to take shape.

Hamas, weakened but unbowed, still controls most of the territory and is trying to entrench that authority. Under the terms of the cease-fire, Israel is meant to withdraw gradually from Gaza, but its troops still occupy key parts of it. Right-wing Israeli leaders want their forces to expand that control, even if it means restarting the war.

A group of foreign security contractors offers another model. At Israel’s invitation, they are running a checkpoint on a crucial thoroughfare in northern Gaza, screening vehicles for weapons. Some Israeli officials say that activity could develop into international stewardship of a much wider area, involving Arab states instead of private contractors.

And in the south, representatives of the Palestinian Authority began over the weekend to staff a border crossing with Egypt, working with European security officials. The authority, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, hopes that it could, in time, replicate those efforts across the entire territory.

A French court convicted the director Christophe Ruggia on Monday of sexually assaulting the actress Adèle Haenel when she was a minor, handing him a four-year sentence — two years under house arrest and the rest suspended.

It was the first major case to examine an accusation of sexual misconduct in French cinema since the #MeToo movement, which emerged in 2017 and was met with a severe backlash in France. It is also an important milestone for the French courts, which feminist activists in the country have denounced as ineffective, or even discriminatory, in cases of sexual violence.

Mr. Ruggia stood at attention as the judges explained the guilty verdict.

“You took advantage of the influence you had on the young actress Adèle Haenel,” the head judge, Gilles Fonrouge, said.

Ms. Haenel did not show any clear emotion when the verdict — which also ordered Mr. Ruggia to pay 50,000 euros, or about $51,300, in damages — was read out. But after she left the courtroom, and was applauded by a crowd outside, she paused for a moment to thank her supporters.

“Thank you all for coming, and for advancing human rights, by your presence, and the fact that we don’t give up,” she said.

“We’re in this together,” she added.

Mr. Ruggia’s lawyer, Fanny Colin, called the ruling “not just unjustified but dangerous,” stating that the judges had ruled to satisfy public opinion and “crushed” the fundamental rule of law — having the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Ruggia planned to appeal, she said.

Mr. Ruggia cast Ms. Haenel in his 2002 film “The Devils,” about a relationship bordering on incest, when she was 12 and he was 36. After the filming finished, she continued to visit him regularly on Saturdays over three years at his apartment, where, the court ruled, he made “sexualized moves” toward her.

When Ms. Haenel first revealed such accusations publicly in 2019, she was the first major French actress to speak out about her personal story of abuse since the #MeToo movement emerged. She was a rising star, praised for fierce yet sensitive performances that had earned her two Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscars.

Mr. Ruggia was a relatively unknown director, but in the insular world of French cinema, he had a prominent role in the French directors’ association and had a reputation for making films about social justice and for defending migrants and human rights.

The case stirred huge interest in the country. The courtroom was packed with Ms. Haenel’s supporters over a two-day trial in December and again on Monday for the verdict.

“Ruggia’s conviction is a warning to producers and directors to be careful,” said Geneviève Sellier, an emeritus professor of cinema studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University and the author of “The Cult of the Auteur.” The ruling, she said, puts an end to the long-held French romantic tradition of sanctifying male artists and holding them above the law when it came to their abusive treatment of usually younger female muses.

“It clearly indicates that it is a relationship of domination of an older man over a very young woman,” Ms. Sellier said.

At the same time, she said, the victim was a child. “The problem is that until now we have never had this type of conviction for an adult victim,” she said.

Among Ms. Haenel’s supporters in the court was Judith Godrèche, a French film star whose public accusations against two directors dating from when she also was a young actress of 14, relaunched the #MeToo movement in France last year. In tears after the decision, she hugged Ms. Haenel and called the court’s decision “hard-hitting” and “unequivocal.”

“There are similarities in our stories. Both are stories of children, told from our adult position,” Ms. Godrèche said in a text message later, adding that she did not believe her complaints would ever see a courtroom, as they were filed beyond the statute of limitations.

During the two-day hearing, two conflicting versions of the past were presented. Ms. Haenel depicted the regular Saturday sessions in Mr. Ruggia’s Paris apartment, where he was meant to teach her the classics of French cinema, as a ruse to sexually assault her.

Mimicking his voice, she recounted how he would caress her thighs, kiss her on the neck while breathing heavily, put his hands under her T-shirt to touch her breasts and her belly, and under her pants to reach the edge of her intimate parts. She broke ties with him when she was 15 and, for years afterward, described experiencing shame and depression.

She said she was speaking in court to defend her former 12-year-old self and other child victims who were hushed into silence, calling it the “most important thing I’ve done in my life — trying to break the loneliness of children.”

“It makes you want to die, in fact, when no one speaks,” said Ms. Haenel, now 35, who often writhed with anger in the courtroom, her face overcome by tics and her feet banging on the floor.

“Shut up!” she screamed at the director at one point, rushing out of the courtroom.

Mr. Ruggia discounted Ms. Haenel’s account as “pure lies.” But he acknowledged having kissed her on the head and grabbing her, but said it had been in a fatherly manner.

“These were affectionate gestures,” he said in court.

Although he talked about her overpowering sexuality, and wrote letters to her stating his heart was broken after she cut ties with him, Mr. Ruggia said he had never been in love with Ms. Haenel.

“For me, Adèle was a kid, a preadolescent,” he said.

Since the publication in 2019 of Ms. Haenel’s story in an extensively researched article in Mediapart, a French investigative site, Mr. Ruggia has been cast out of cinema. He moved to Brittany in northwestern France to care for his mother and lives off welfare. He said during the court proceedings he had been waiting years for the trial, “to see if I’m going to get my life back, if I’m going to be able to make films again or not.”

Since her disclosure, Ms. Haenel has also stopped working in cinema. She later explained in a public letter that she believed the industry protected sexual abusers and preferred that victims “disappear and die in silence.”

“I am canceling you from my world,” she wrote.

The trial’s subtext was how the justice system in France deals with perpetrators of sexual assault and their victims. According to a French parliamentary report published last month, eight out of every 10 rape victims do not go to the police, revealing a profound distrust in the system.

Among the few who do file formal complaints of rape, an astounding 94 percent are dismissed and never reach a courtroom, a 2024 report by a research institute specializing in public policy revealed. Ms. Haenel initially told her story to a French investigative journalist and said she did not trust the justice system.

“Justice ignores us,” she said at the time, “we ignore justice.”

Perhaps as a result of Ms. Haenel’s harsh criticism and the attention her case drew, the police investigation into her case was extremely rigorous and detailed.

She herself described the experience as like being given a tour of the U.S.S.R. by government minders — telling the Mediapart journalist Marine Turchi that she saw only the “beautiful premises, the most beautiful achievements, the most beautiful municipal gym” and none of the grim reality.

“The tendency of the police and the justice system to mistreat the victims has not disappeared,” said Ms. Sellier, the feminist film critic and author. “But, it’s now visible and exposed. And the need for training for the police and the justice system in these cases is now recognized as necessary.”

The problem, she added, was France was already struggling financially, and looking for places to cut. “There is no budget to do it,” she said. “That’s the missing step.”

A car bomb killed 15 agricultural workers in northern Syria on Monday, the country’s civil defense force said, as ongoing violence threatens to undermine the new government’s push for stability.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the explosion, which took place in the city of Manbij, about 20 miles from the border with Turkey. Manbij has been a focal point of violence between armed groups, one backed by the United States and the other by Turkey. The blast on Monday was one of the deadliest such attacks since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December.

The Turkish-backed fighters wrested control of the city in December from Kurdish-led forces, who are supported by the United States, and there has since been a spate of car bombings, according to the White Helmets, the Syrian civil defense force.

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A prominent pro-Russia separatist figure from Ukraine was killed after a bomb exploded on Monday inside a gated residence in Moscow, Russian news media said, in what appears to be another attack targeting opponents of Kyiv.

The figure, Armen Sarkisyan, the founder of a battalion fighting in eastern Ukraine, was pronounced dead in a Moscow hospital, Russian news media said, citing the country’s Investigative Committee, which typically handles high-profile crimes.

The Investigative Committee said earlier in a statement that four people had been taken to a hospital with injuries after a bomb exploded at the Scarlet Sails apartment complex. It said one person had been killed in the explosion.

The Russian media reports said that Mr. Sarkisyan had been taken to the hospital with injuries and had died there, and that his bodyguard had died at the scene.

The agency did not name any suspects. It was also not immediately clear if Mr. Sarkisyan had been a resident of the complex.

Ukrainian officials have not yet commented on the blast.

The explosion inside a building in an upscale neighborhood appeared to be another significant attack in Moscow, where a Russian general was killed in December by a bomb planted on a scooter in an assassination Ukraine claimed.

The general, Igor Kirillov, was in charge of the Russian military’s nuclear and chemical weapons protection forces. His assistant also died in the attack.

Mr. Sarkisyan was wanted in Ukraine on accusations of plotting killings and hiring thugs to harass antigovernment activists during protests in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in 2014.

He later supported Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and most recently founded a battalion fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

Ivan Prikhodko, the mayor of the Russian-controlled town of Horlivka in eastern Ukraine, where Mr. Sarkisyan was originally from, referred in a Telegram post to the leader’s death, without providing details. He hailed Mr. Sarkisyan’s Arbat battalion for playing a “crucial role in ensuring security” in areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk region that Russia had captured.

Footage posted by Tass, a state-owned news agency, and other Russian media outlets from the scene of the explosion showed the glass doors of the entryway mangled and smashed.

Russian officials did not immediately say how an explosive was planted and detonated.

Dmitri S. Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, on Monday had no comment on the blast and said that an official inquiry was underway.

More than a week after it began, a standoff between Ukraine’s defense minister and the official overseeing weapons procurement remains unresolved and is beginning to disrupt arms contracts, Ukrainian defense companies say.

Ukraine’s arms industry trade group has said that more than 80 defense companies, accounting for about a third of last year’s supplies to the army, “are unable to receive payment for completed orders and sign new contracts.” In one such case, a contract to produce 155-millimeter artillery rounds, a caliber used in many field guns, has been put on hold, the producer of the ammunition said.

The standoff is unlikely to have an immediate effect on arms supplies to Ukrainian troops, the companies said, as current deliveries are drawn from previous contracts. But if it persists, it could jeopardize supplies in the months ahead at a critical time for the Ukrainian Army, which is already struggling to contain Russia’s advance on the battlefield.

At the root of the issue is a tense showdown over the leadership of Ukraine’s defense procurement agency, which had a budget of over $7 billion last year. The defense minister, Rustem Umerov, recently dismissed the agency’s director, Maryna Bezrukova, citing “poor procurement planning” and delayed supplies to the front line, and appointed an acting head.

Ms. Bezrukova has denied the claims of mismanagement and said her dismissal was illegal, because her contract was extended by the agency’s supervisory board. She said on Monday that she would not resign.

The standoff has escalated to the point where both Ms. Bezrukova and the new acting head, Arsen Zhumadilov, have been working from the agency’s headquarters in recent days, including Monday, leaving international partners and defense companies confused about who was responsible for signing contracts.

“The normal day-to-day work of the defense procurement agency is just blocked,” Serhiy Honcharov, head of the National Association of Ukrainian Defense Industries, said in an interview. “Who is actually in charge? No one knows. In this chaos, it’s impossible to sign contracts.”

Serhiy Bulavko, the head of the procurement control department at the defense ministry, told reporters on Friday that there were “no disruptions in weapons supplies” as of now and that “contracting is underway.”

The tumult in Ukraine’s defense sector also risks derailing Kyiv’s efforts to convince its allies, especially President Trump, to maintain support for its fight against Russia. A key part of these efforts was a new mechanism to fund Ukrainian weapon production with Western money through the agency, as an alternative to direct arms supplies.

Last year, half a billion dollars’ worth of weapons were produced through this mechanism. Kyiv aims to double that amount this year.

The agency was established last year in an effort to curb corruption in the procurement process — a move that was applauded by Ukraine’s Western partners. It buys weapons from both foreign and domestic producers.

Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s minister for European integration and justice, complained last week that the standoff was sending the wrong message to Kyiv’s partners. She told the Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne that NATO members had raised questions about the issue in private meetings. “Such aggressive public communication does not help Ukraine, inside and outside,” she said.

Mr. Umerov sought to dismiss Ms. Bezrukova by declining to extend her contract as head of the agency. The move has sparked some calls for his resignation. But he appears unlikely to step down after President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced support for him in an interview with The Associated Press released Sunday.

“The defense minister has the right to do everything necessary to prevent any delays in supplies,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Vladyslav Belbas, the head of Ukrainian Armor Design and Manufacturing Co., a private Ukrainian arms company, said a contract to produce 155-millimeter artillery rounds that was slated to be signed by late January had been put on hold because of the dispute. Ms. Bezrukova confirmed that the contract had not been signed.

“That affects our production capabilities. Because if we don’t know what’s happening, how can I scale the production or how can I least plan for the production?” Mr. Belbas said in a phone interview.

The authorities in Greece on Monday closed schools and deployed emergency services on the Aegean island of Santorini, one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, after the area was rattled by hundreds of minor and moderate earthquakes.

The ministry for civil protection said on Sunday that more than 200 tremors had struck the Aegean region between Santorini and Amorgos in the past 48 hours. They continued into Monday, shaking residents sometimes every few minutes. Precautions were also taken on several other islands affected by the tremors, with schools closed and emergency teams on standby.

Gerasimos Papadopoulos, a seismologist, wrote on Facebook that the quakes had been increasing in magnitude, calling them an “intense pre-seismic sequence.”

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, speaking from Brussels, where he is attending a meeting of European Union leaders, appealed to islanders to “be calm and follow civil protection orders.”

Most of the tremors were minor, but some exceeded magnitude 4.5, and Mr. Papadopoulos referred to readings of 4.7 and 4.9 in his Facebook post.

There were no reports of injuries, and only minimal damage, including minor landslides, was recorded by the authorities. Greece sits on multiple fault lines and is often rattled by earthquakes, but such a sequence of tremors growing in intensity is less common.

The Greek Organization of Earthquake Planning and Protection on Sunday advised islanders to avoid large gatherings in enclosed spaces, stay away from ports near cliffs and empty swimming pools to reduce potential damage to buildings. Emergency workers set up tents in outdoor sports venues, and the local authorities designated meeting points for potential evacuations.

The measures were precautionary, Greece’s civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias, said on Sunday, but he urged citizens to “strictly follow safety recommendations to minimize risk.”

The extent of that risk was unclear, with some experts playing down the potential for a major earthquake and stressing that the seismic activity was not linked to a dormant volcano on Santorini.

The chances of a much bigger and more damaging quake were “very small, that’s the extreme scenario,” Efthimios Lekkas, director of the earthquake planning organization, told Greek television on Monday. Referring to the potential for an eruption on Santorini, he said, “The volcano may awaken, but there’s no way we will have an explosion.” Mr. Lekkas said on Saturday that the volcano had produced very large eruptions only every 20,000 years.

The last one occurred more than 3,500 years ago, forming Santorini’s unique caldera, multicolored beaches and rock formations, which draw more than three million visitors annually. Since then the area has seen only a minor eruption, in 1950, that caused no casualties.

The island’s last major earthquake was in 1956, when a series of temblors of magnitude 7 to 7.7 killed 53 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

Since then, no major tremors have occurred, though a series of smaller quakes also occurred during 14 months in 2011 and 2012, with shaking that diminished in intensity. Similar measures to those instituted this time around were not taken then, according to local officials.

In an interview with Volcano TV, a local station, on Sunday, Santorini’s mayor, Nikos Zorzos, said that the current precautionary measures, with emergency vehicles on the island’s roads, “might be excessive.” But he told national TV on Monday that the guidelines of expert committees should be followed.

Reports also suggested that thousands of people were looking to depart the island. Nonetheless, Mr. Zorzos said, “There is no mass exodus, some people are choosing to leave.”

Greek television on Monday showed dozens of cars waiting at Santorini’s main port, while Aegean Airlines said that it had added three additional flights from the island on Monday and Tuesday.

Mr. Zorzos had been due in Athens on Monday to open the island’s annual tourism campaign, an event that was canceled on Sunday night.

The impact on tourism on the island was unclear, though the British Foreign Office included the official warnings in its online travel advisory for Greece.