The de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, met on Monday with three senior members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who were visiting the kingdom to discuss the future of both Gaza and Ukraine.

The visit of Mr. Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, came amid criticism that the Trump administration was acting without consulting relevant foreign partners about the wars in both countries.

Mr. Rubio also met earlier in the day with Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister.

Little was released about the content of the meetings, except for a video of a brief exchange between the men in which the prince said he was glad to work with the Trump administration.

Mr. Rubio, who flew to Riyadh from Israel, and his colleagues were expected to press the Saudi leadership to propose a vision for postwar Gaza. President Trump’s idea to depopulate and occupy the territory has spurred widespread opposition in the Arab world, including in Saudi Arabia. That has led Mr. Rubio and other U.S. officials to encourage Arab leaders to suggest an alternative.

Following their meeting, the state department said Mr. Rubio and the crown prince discussed developments in Gaza, with the Mr. Rubio underscoring “the importance of an arrangement for Gaza that contributes to regional security,” according to Tammy Bruce, a State Department Spokeswoman.

The three U.S. envoys were also scheduled to meet in Riyadh on Tuesday with Russian officials to discuss the future of the Russia-Ukraine war.

In addition to angering Arab allies with his contentious proposal for Gaza, Mr. Trump frustrated partners in Europe when he spoke last week unilaterally with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about Ukraine’s future. His administration has also said that European governments will play no role in future talks, despite the conflict taking place within Europe’s borders.

The moves prompted concern in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, where leaders fear being sidelined from discussions that will dictate their countries’ futures. Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, reiterated in an interview that aired on Sunday that his country would “never” accept a peace deal struck by the United States and Russia if Ukraine was not involved in the talks.

Mr. Rubio’s visit comes amid swirling uncertainty about the future of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, as well as the long-term governance of the territory.

Israeli officials were expected to meet in Cairo on Monday to iron out disagreements about sending humanitarian aid, including temporary housing, such as tents and trailers, to Gaza. But the Israeli government has yet to decide whether to advance negotiations to extend the truce, which will lapse in early March unless Hamas and Israel restart talks. Israeli cabinet ministers were set to gather on Monday evening to debate the issue, but it was not certain that they would vote on it.

The Israeli leadership wants to avoid prolonging the truce if it allows Hamas to survive the war as a military force. But Hamas, though indicating a willingness to share administrative control of the territory, appears unwilling to disarm its military wing.

Mr. Trump has suggested ending the impasse by depopulating Gaza and sending its residents to Egypt and Jordan — a move strongly opposed by those countries as well as Saudi Arabia. The forced expulsion of Palestinians would be ethnic cleansing and a war crime, international law experts say.

The Trump administration’s proposal has created a further obstacle to Israel’s long-sought goal of normalizing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi leadership has said that it will not recognize Israel if Palestinians are displaced from Gaza, or if Israel refuses to create a pathway to Palestinian sovereignty.

The discussion grew more fraught after Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, suggested that Saudi Arabia host Palestinian refugees and create a Palestinian state on Saudi soil.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry rejected Mr. Netanyahu’s statements as those of “an extremist, occupying mind-set” that fails to understand the historical and cultural significance of Palestinian land.

Here’s what else is happening in the region:

• The Israeli military said on Monday that it had killed a senior Hamas operative, Muhammad Shaheen, in a strike in Lebanon. Hamas has long maintained a presence in Lebanon and has often acted there in coordination with its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. The strike came a day before a cease-fire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah is set to elapse. Officials hope to extend the truce, even though Israel is expected to keep troops in several positions inside the Lebanese border past the deadline.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel, and Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington.

The leaders of many of Europe’s biggest countries came to Paris on Monday in an effort to forge a strategy for their own security, as President Trump’s envoys prepared for talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine without them.

The meeting in Paris was pulled together hastily after the first visit to Europe last week by Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which left European leaders alarmed by both the tone and message of the new Trump administration and what it might hold for the continent.

European leaders were shocked by the hostility of Mr. Vance’s scathing speech in Munich criticizing Europe’s exclusion of far-right groups from power, and the sudden American plans to begin peace talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia, starting on Tuesday, without the presence of Ukrainian or European leaders.

Mr. Trump’s phone call last week to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia broke ranks with most European allies who have tried to isolate the man who ordered the invasion of sovereign Ukraine three years ago next week.

The meetings with the new U.S. officials sparked fear that the United States wants to pull thousands of troops out of Europe, as Mr. Hegseth suggested in Brussels last week, but on a timetable that would leave Europe vulnerable to an aggressive Russia, and that Mr. Trump will cut a deal with Mr. Putin over the heads of Ukrainians and Europeans.

“Europe’s security is at a turning point,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, on X after arriving in Paris on Monday. “Yes, it is about Ukraine — but it is also about us. We need an urgency mind-set. We need a surge in defense. And we need both of them now.”

The meeting, called by President Emmanuel Macron of France at the Élysée Palace, was an initial effort to discuss a more coordinated and collective response to the Trump administration. Mr. Macron and Mr. Trump held a 20-minute phone call before the meeting began, the French said.

At the meeting, the European leaders discussed what they are willing to commit to secure any peace deal over the war in Ukraine in the short term, and in the long term, how to secure the continent as it faces an expansionist Russia and the predicted withdrawal of the assurance of American support.

They discussed issues including military spending and how to guarantee Ukraine’s security once some sort of permanent cease-fire or peace deal is reached, including the possibility of troop commitments in Ukraine.

Trump officials have said that they expect the Europeans to be responsible for the main financial and military support for Ukraine in the future, but there is enormous vagueness around the whole issue. Europeans want to be at the negotiating table, if one is ever created.

As a former NATO official, Camille Grand, said, “Europeans cannot reasonably be expected to provide the security guarantees for a deal they are not negotiating.”

After the meeting, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that any debate now on sending peacekeepers to Ukraine was “completely premature” and “highly inappropriate” while the war is ongoing.

Mr. Scholz said he was “a little irritated” about the peacekeeping debate “at the wrong time.” His views are shared by Poland and Spain, among other nations, especially given the vagueness about what any security guarantee would mean.

Mr. Scholz, like Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, warned against dividing Europe from the United States despite disagreements. “There must be no division of security and responsibility between Europe and the USA,” Mr. Scholz said. “NATO is based on the fact that we always act together and share the risk, ensuring our security. This must not be called into question.”

Agreeing, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he did not look at the American messages of the past few days as a sign of disengagement, but more as a strategy to push Europe to increase its own military spending and get more involved in Ukrainian security. “We are sending the message back that we are in it together,” Mr. Schoof said.

Mr. Tusk said again that Poland would not send troops into Ukraine but would support countries that chose to do so. And he warned that “if someone seriously wants to talk about guarantees for Ukraine, they must be 100 percent sure that they will be able to fulfill such guarantees and obligations.”

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark said that such an informal meeting is “not for decision-making,” but “the most important thing from the meeting tonight is the need for all of us to step up when it comes to spending in defense. Russia is not only a threat against Ukraine but all of us.”

The Paris meeting comes the same day that Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The State Department said he would be joined by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy.

They are supposed to discuss with Russian officials the future of the Russia-Ukraine war, but even those talks are more about how to set up future peace talks rather than about the substance of them.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was in the United Arab Emirates on Monday for a track of negotiations with Russia that is separate from the Trump administration’s effort, focusing on prisoner exchanges and returning Ukrainian children from Russia.

He reiterated that Ukraine would accept no terms negotiated between Russia and the Trump administration without Ukrainian participation, and confirmed that Ukrainian representatives would not be at the talks in Saudi Arabia.

“The issue of a peacekeeping contingent is being discussed in France,” Mr. Zelensky told journalists in Abu Dhabi. “Emmanuel told me he would share all the details,” he said, referring to France’s president. “If we talk about a peacekeeping contingent, then what will be its size? Where will it be deployed? Which countries will be part of it? How will they be armed? It is crucial not to lose the U.S. in this process in one way or another.”

Mr. Zelensky also said that when it comes to making a deal with Russia, “Europe must be at the negotiating table — I don’t know in what format, but this is very important for us.”

Ivo H. Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, said that Mr. Zelensky and the Europeans “have realized they’re in this boat together and can no longer rely on the U.S., and that the concern that Trump and Putin will do a deal over their heads is real.”

“So they have to depend on each other, and Europeans have to decide whether to step up to help the Ukrainians continue the war, if the proposed deal is a bad one, or to throw Kyiv under the bus, which would be appeasing Putin,” Mr. Daalder said. “They now realize that they have no real choice and that they have to back Ukraine, and that’s what this meeting is all about.”

But already there were fissures. The Paris talks included leaders from Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as the president of the European Council, the president of the European Commission and the secretary general of NATO.

There was criticism from frontline European states who were not invited, with one senior Baltic official saying that Mr. Macron’s initiative splits the unity of the European Union, and that the meeting should have been called by President António Costa of the European Council, not by Mr. Macron.

“In public, Europeans will say we all must stand together, but this selective meeting is not a good start to a united Europe on these issues,” said Mary Elise Sarotte, a diplomatic historian who wrote an influential book on the early days of NATO expansion, “Not One Inch.”

As he often does, Mr. Macron seized on a perceived vacuum in European leadership to call this informal meeting to talk about a collective response to what many perceive as an American retreat from decades of security responsibility in Europe, in order to focus on Asia and domestic challenges.

Mr. Macron has made calls for increased European sovereignty and capacity for self-defense a hallmark of his presidency, which he has sometimes called “strategic autonomy,” less reliant on Washington.

This meeting was expected to be the first of many among European leaders in the coming weeks, an adviser to Mr. Macron said, adding that the meetings would include other countries in the future.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said in an article published in The Daily Telegraph that he was “ready and willing to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our own troops on the ground if necessary.”

After the meeting, Mr. Starmer said for any European deployment “there must be a U.S. backstop, because a U.S. security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.”

Mr. Macron has been speaking for months to European leaders about forming a cease-fire buffer force in Ukraine to ensure that any peace deal with Russia is maintained. But his original idea was to have European forces far from the front lines, to help Ukrainians with training and logistics.

Military experts have said that it is first necessary to decide what kind of force is required, with what kind of resources, and what happens if they are attacked by Russia. This is why European leaders have said that they must have guarantees of American involvement, even if American troops are not on the ground, for key weapons systems, air defense, air cover, satellite intelligence and the like.

European leaders also discussed the acceleration of European defense capabilities, as many now believe that the United States will withdraw tens of thousands of American troops from Europe.

Just 23 of 32 NATO members currently spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense — after having vowed to do so in 2014. And NATO has made it clear that 2 percent must be “a floor, not a ceiling,” and more must be spent. A new spending goal will be set at the NATO summit meeting this summer and is likely to be 3 percent or 3.5 percent.

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ségolène Le Stradic from Paris, Claire Moses from London and Edward Wong from Washington, D.C.

With his unapologetic conservatism, his vow to fix a “broken” nation, his “common sense” fight against elites and all things woke, his norm-shattering personal attacks against political rivals, his pugilistic use of demeaning nicknames and his open disdain of the news media, Pierre Poilievre, the front-runner to become Canada’s next leader, has become a darling of the American right.

Some of President Trump’s most prominent supporters have publicly showered Mr. Poilievre, the leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, with compliments — a remarkable feat given that Canadian opposition leaders tend to attract little attention in the United States, much less praise.

But when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who is leading an aggressive campaign against the U.S. federal bureaucracy on behalf of Mr. Trump, recently endorsed Mr. Poilievre as Canada’s next leader, Mr. Poilievre found himself in an uncomfortable situation.

Asked at a news conference last month whether he accepted the endorsement, Mr. Poilievre said, “My three-year-old has just told me that he wants to go to Mars, so I guess then Mr. Musk would be the right guy to put him in touch with,” before adding that it would be great if Mr. Musk opened some Tesla factories in Canada.

Mr. Poilievre’s backing by people close to Mr. Trump was always a double-edged sword in Canada, where the U.S. president is popular among hardcore conservatives but not among mainstream voters.

But that support now risks becoming a liability as Canada confronts a once unimaginable threat: the president of the United States, Canada’s closest ally, repeatedly questioning Canada’s viability as a nation, threatening to annex it through economic force and denigrating its prime minister as a “governor.”

As patriotic feelings have surged in Canada, Mr. Poilievre’s lead has narrowed significantly in several polls. Until a month ago, Mr. Poilievre, 45, appeared to be a shoo-in to become Canada’s next leader after having built a double-digit lead in the polls by channeling national frustration and anger at the deeply unpopular prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

Mr. Trudeau is expected to step down next month as prime minister after his Liberal Party selects a successor, who will automatically become prime minister. A general election is then likely to be held a couple of months later.

“For Poilievre, the biggest challenge is that for the last two years the villain in his story was Justin Trudeau,” said David Coletto, the founder of Abacus Data, a polling firm. “But that villain is now leaving, and there’s a new, bigger, badder villain that is coming from outside the country — and that’s Donald Trump.”

“What Canadians are now trying to figure out is who’s the hero in that story, who’s going to save them and protect them against that threat,” Mr. Coletto added. “And the conclusion that more people are going to choose Pierre Poilievre is now up in the air.”

Mr. Poilievre has responded by toning down his attack-dog persona and by switching to a “Canada First” message that he emphasized at a rally in Ottawa over the weekend. Before hundreds of supporters, Mr. Poilievre spent much of his speech responding to the threat from the United States, vowing to “bear any burden and pay any price to protect our sovereignty and independence.’’

A spokesman for Mr. Poilievre did not respond to requests for an interview.

Mr. Poilievre’s supporters said he was simply adjusting to external developments and that he remained true to his long-held core conservative principles.

Ginny Roth, a partner at Crestview Strategy and a former communications director for Mr. Poilievre, said that Canada First was “a turning away from a naïve, international liberalism that saw global elites put the interests of their own business and, frankly, coupled with left-wing causes, ahead of the interests of regular working people.”

Ms. Roth attributed Mr. Poilievre and the Conservatives’ dip in the polls to a blip enjoyed by the Liberals after Mr. Trudeau’s resignation announcement, as well as a temporary “rally-around-the-flag” reaction among voters to Mr. Trump’s imposition of tariffs and his annexation threats.

No matter how the polls evolve, Mr. Poilievre’s situation shows how Mr. Trump’s aggressive foreign policy has upended the domestic politics of a major ally, experts said.

“With the Trump administration in power again, wreaking havoc in so many ways, including trade with Canada, it puts Mr. Poilievre in a very difficult position,” said Jonathan Malloy, an expert on Canadian politics at Carleton University. “I think he’s going to have to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump, much more than he was planning to. His opponents, of course, will accuse him of being Trump-lite.”

A career politician, Mr. Poilievre has been known for his combativeness since being elected to Parliament in 2004 at the age of 25. But it is in the last few years that he has embraced the tactics and messages used by Mr. Trump and others, portraying himself as an outsider fighting against a corrupt political, business, academic and media establishment.

He won the leadership of the Conservatives in 2022, after championing more than any other politician the truckers who took over and paralyzed Ottawa, the capital, for weeks to protest anti-COVID mandates. In the past two years, he pummeled Mr. Trudeau and other politicians with a constant barrage of personal insults and attacks that is new to Canadian politics.

Mr. Poilievre has given rivals insulting nicknames, including “Trust Fund Trudeau” to Mr. Trudeau, the son of a former prime minister, and “Sellout Singh” to the leader of the New Democrats, a smaller left-leaning party. Like Mr. Trump, he often says that problems can be solved with “common sense” — a term used by populists to pit ordinary people against a supposedly misguided and corrupt elite, said Emily Laxer, an expert on populism at York University.

While Mr. Poilievre’s policies are based on traditional conservative ideas of small government, free market and lower taxes, his populist tactics are a break from the past in Canada, Ms. Laxer said.

“There is evidence of a kind of mimicking of Trump’s messaging and strategy,” Ms. Laxer said. “And certainly, they both have benefited from the polarization of their societies, politically, and they’ve contributed to that polarization.”

Mr. Poilievre’s campaign against what he perceives as woke and the news media, vowing to get rid of the public broadcaster, CBC, has further endeared him to Fox News, Joe Rogan, Mr. Musk and other high-profile supporters of Mr. Trump, who tend to dislike Mr. Trudeau.

Mr. Musk described as a “masterpiece” a video in which Mr. Poilievre, while eating an apple, spars with a reporter questioning him about his use of populism. Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire, posted that Mr. Poilievre was “extremely impressive” and “should be Canada’s next leader,” adding, “Make Canada Great Again.” Mr. Musk responded with a 100 percent emoji.

Fred Delorey, a former national campaign manager for the Conservative Party, said that Mr. Poilievre had elicited that kind of reaction because of the power of his message.

“I’ve never seen a Canadian conservative leader resonate outside the country like Poilievre does,” said Mr. Delorey, now chair of Northstar Public Affairs. “His style is direct to the point, and I think people appreciate that.”

Mr. Delorey said that the American right’s favorable comments about Mr. Poilievre would not have an effect on Canadian voters. Mr. Poilievre, he said, should stay focused on his message, “on what matters. Who cares if someone likes him or doesn’t like him.”

But Mr. Coletto, the pollster, said that these endorsements and Mr. Poilievre’s attitude toward the American president will be factors in a general election that has abruptly shifted from being about Mr. Trudeau to being about Mr. Trump.

“There is a subset of Conservative supporters who actually like Donald Trump, even today, despite everything he’s done,” Mr. Coletto said. “But Poilievre’s got an equally large part of his base that doesn’t.”

And during the upcoming general election campaign, Mr. Poilievre’s rivals are likely to seize on the endorsements, Mr. Coletto said, adding, “It’s common in campaigns to remind voters of who likes who.”

The Israeli military said on Monday that it will keep forces in five locations in southern Lebanon after a deadline for its full withdrawal lapses on Tuesday. The announcement raised fears of a resurgence in violence in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

After more than a year of war, the two sides reached a cease-fire in late November that was contingent on both Israel and Hezbollah ceding control of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese military by the end of January. Hezbollah had long dominated the region, while Israel had captured large parts of it after invading Lebanon in September.

In late January, mediators announced a three-week extension to that agreement, giving Israel more time to complete its withdrawal. The truce has frequently been punctured by bursts of violence — including an Israeli airstrike on Monday that killed a Hamas leader in southern Lebanon — but neither side has reverted to full-scale war.

Now, the specter of renewed conflict looms once more after the Israeli military announced that it will keep some troops in Lebanon beyond the Feb. 18 deadline, potentially preventing some Lebanese civilians from returning home.

“We will leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points along the border in Lebanon so we can continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat,” said Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman, in a briefing for reporters on Monday afternoon.

Colonel Shoshani named several locations spread along most of the length of the 75-mile border, including places across the border from Israeli villages that were badly damaged by Hezbollah rocket fire during the war. He said that Hezbollah had not lived up to its own side of the November agreement and still posed a threat to Israeli residents in those areas. He declined to say how long the occupation would last. It is unclear to what extent Hezbollah has a presence in those areas.

Hezbollah’s leader, Naim Qassem, vehemently opposed the idea of Israel keeping troops inside Lebanon during a speech on Sunday. But he stopped short of pledging to resume attacks against Israel.

“Israel must withdraw completely on Feb. 18,” Mr. Qassem said. “This is the agreement.”

“Everyone knows how an occupation is dealt with,” he warned, without giving further details.

The war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out after the Lebanese militia started firing on Israeli military positions in solidarity with its ally Hamas, shortly after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.

The conflict remained largely contained to back-and-forth missile and rocket strikes, displacing thousands on either side of the border, until it erupted into a full frontal war and wide-scale Israeli bombardment of Lebanese cities in the second half of 2024.

Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership in an aerial campaign and invaded large swaths of southern Lebanon, in moves that collectively displaced more than a million people in Lebanon.

Israel said its intention was to prevent Hezbollah from posing a threat to residents of northern Israel, some 60,000 of whom were forced to leave their homes because of Hezbollah rocket fire.

Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.

A South African imam who devoted his life to promoting gay rights and tolerance for L.G.B.T.Q. Muslims was shot and killed in the coastal city of Gqeberha on Saturday, the police said.

Muhsin Hendricks was credited by some as being the world’s first openly gay imam. In 2018, he founded the Al-Ghurbaah Foundation, a nonprofit that provided support services for Muslims discriminated against for their sexual orientation.

The organization worked to help Muslims around the world reconcile their faith with their sexual orientation and gender identity.

A statement from the South Africa Human Rights Commission condemned the killing. It cited footage circulated on social media in which a hooded man emerged from a pickup truck and fired shots through the windows of a car in a residential area before speeding away. The video has not been verified by The New York Times.

South Africa’s deputy justice minister, Andries Nel, said it was too early to say whether the shooting was a hate crime, but he said that the police were “hot on the heels of the suspects.”

Mr. Hendricks faced fierce criticism in the country, not least on social media.

In an interview on Monday with Newzroom Afrika, a South African digital channel, Mr. Nel said that though there are debates among Muslims in South Africa about gay rights, those debates acknowledge the primacy of the country’s constitutional protections.

“They have been unambiguous in reaffirming the values of our Constitution, the values of tolerance of plurality and of human respect,” he said.

Mr. Hendricks was a prominent supporter of gay people in South Africa, which in 1998 became the first country in Africa to decriminalize homosexuality, when the Johannesburg High Court ruled that existing sodomy laws violated the post-apartheid Constitution.

A survey in 2021 by the research network Afrobarometer rated South Africa as the second-most tolerant country on the continent when it came to same-sex relationships, after the island nation of Cabo Verde.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association said that it was “deeply shocked” by the killing. Mr. Hendricks had mentored people in South Africa and around the world as they attempted to reconcile their faith and lives and was a “testament to the healing that solidarity across communities can bring,” Julia Ehrt, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

South Africa is seen as an outlier on the continent for its approach to gay rights. More than 30 of Africa’s 54 countries criminalize same-sex couples, and in recent years at least six countries, including Ghana and Uganda, have taken steps toward harsher anti-gay laws.

Nearly 40 years after she was born with a malformed spine and misshapen limbs — most likely because her father was exposed to Agent Orange, the toxic chemical that the American military used during the Vietnam War — Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem finally got some help from the United States.

A project funded by U.S.A.I.D. gave her graphic design training in 2022 and helped her land a job. Even when the company closed a few months ago, she stayed hopeful: The same program for Agent Orange victims was due to deliver a new computer, or a small loan.

I was the first to tell her that the support may never come; that President Trump had frozen U.S.A.I.D. funding and planned to fire nearly everyone associated with the humanitarian agency.

“It makes no sense,” Ms. Diem told me, her tiny body curled into a wheelchair, below a crucifix on the wall. “Agent Orange came from the U.S. — it was used here, and that makes us victims,” she said. “A little support for people like us means a lot, but at the same time, it’s the U.S.’s responsibility.”

As Mr. Trump and Elon Musk gut U.S.A.I.D., this can now be added to the list of effects: Two months before the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end, with ceremonies already planned, they have demolished the main American outlet for making amends, shaking the foundation of a partnership meant to be a bulwark against China.

As many as three million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange, including more than 150,000 children born with serious developmental problems.

Addressing the painful legacy of the chemical’s wartime use as a defoliant, along with other issues tied to American military involvement in Vietnam, has offered the U.S. a chance to fuse past and present, soft power and hard power, in the service of courting a rising regional power.

That’s now halted. Bulldozers that were cleaning up contamination at a former American air base in southern Vietnam — which both countries might eventually want to use — have gone silent. Around 1,000 mine-removal workers in central Vietnam have been sent home.

And with the suspension of aid for Agent Orange victims, along with efforts to find and identify Vietnam’s missing war dead, Mr. Trump has essentially stalled 30 years of progress in bringing together former enemies, including two militaries still feeling out whether to trust one another.

While Vietnam’s leaders have tread carefully with the Trump administration, hoping to avoid its punitive tariffs, they have lamented the loss of war legacy programs. They have long viewed the work as a prerequisite for almost everything else.

American officials who spent a lifetime building bilateral bonds are especially furious, signing open letters of complaint and condemning what they see as a plainly misguided move.

“One thing I know about the Vietnamese is that they want to know they can depend on us; that we won’t lose interest and walk away,” said Tim Rieser, a former foreign policy aide to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who led legislative efforts on war legacy issues before retiring in 2023. “And that’s what the Trump administration is doing.”

American military commanders see Vietnam, with its strategic location, as vital for maintaining stability in Asia, especially as China has become more aggressive around the shipping lanes and islands off the Vietnamese coast.

U.S. Navy warships have made several port visits to Vietnam since 2018. More are expected. And in a sign of Pentagon support for aid as a tool of alliance-building, half of the funding that U.S.A.I.D. manages for Agent Orange cleanup comes from the Defense Department.

Perhaps some of that will survive. According to the official account of a call on Feb. 7 between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vietnam’s defense minister, Gen. Phan Van Giang, Mr. Hegseth “underscored the department’s support for ongoing efforts to collaborate on legacy of war issues.”

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift the U.S.A.I.D. funding freeze, setting a Tuesday deadline for evidence of compliance.

But as of Monday in Vietnam, the work stoppage was still in effect. Even if funding returns, in a year meant to mark recovery from the darkness of a cruel war, fundamental damage has already been done in ways that feel — for partners and victims in both countries — like a knife shoved into old wounds.

From Enemies to Partners

Combat veterans were the original reconcilers. At first, they partnered up at the squad level, to rid battlegrounds of unexploded ordnance. But once Washington and Hanoi got on board, bigger problems were tackled, starting with Da Nang Airport, a former American military base near the old dividing line between North and South Vietnam.

It had been a centerpiece of the campaign to clear vegetation with Agent Orange, named for the colored stripe on its barrels and notorious for containing 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin — one of the most noxious substances ever created.

At the start, no one knew if the airport’s poisoned land could be made safe. The projected cost of remediation tripled. But after seven years and more than $115 million in U.S. assistance, it was clean. So clean that Mr. Trump landed there with Air Force One in 2018.

Bien Hoa air base, about 20 miles outside Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is a tougher challenge: a 10-year, $450 million project involving the treatment of enough contaminated earth to fill 200 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The United States has contributed more than $160 million so far, out of a pledge of $300 million under U.S.A.I.D. management.

Tetra Tech, an American engineering firm hired by U.S.A.I.D. for part of the project, did not respond to emails asking about its status.

When I visited the busy neighborhood around the base last week, a Vietnamese military officer confirmed that the cleanup had been halted, creating anxiety in the city. Many of the homes nearby had been inside the base’s perimeter, until its footprint was condensed.

Dinh Thi Lan, 56, told me that in 1991, she was one of the first to move onto a street that abutted the base and a contaminated lake. During seasonal floods, she said, fish would sometimes flop out.

“I ate the fish,” she said. “I’m worried.”

Behind her, in a back room, I could see a photo of a bright-eyed man with thick hair, above candles on a dark wood table.

“My husband,” she told me. “He died of stomach cancer in 2009. He was 39.”

Searching for Impact

During the war, Dong Nai Province, with Bien Hoa at its southeastern edge, became a logistics hub for North Vietnamese soldiers as they prepared to take Saigon.

Before that, the U.S. military had tried to strip the verdant landscape of food and cover.

Pilots usually flew 150 feet from the ground. They sprayed 56 percent of Dong Nai with nearly 1.8 million gallons of Agent Orange — more than in any other province in Vietnam.

Truong Thi Nguyet, 75, joined the guerrilla ranks in Dong Nai at 16. After the war, she founded one of Vietnam’s first rehabilitation centers for people with disabilities caused by Agent Orange, which the United States banned in 1971.

In remote villages, she found dozens of boys and girls with missing or malformed limbs, deafness, cerebral palsy, cognitive impairment and sometimes all of the above. One morning, she discovered a poor family so overwhelmed that they had put their severely disabled daughter in a cage outside.

“I never thought I would tell anyone this story,” Ms. Nguyet said when I visited her home in Dinh Quan township. “It was so painful, and I was so angry.”

“I tried to raise some money and convince the family to build a small room in the house,” she added. “After a while, with some financial support, they did.”

Most of the funding for the rehab center comes from the Vietnamese government. But a sign over the door declares that U.S.A.I.D. provided equipment in 2020: a few desks and a metal bed; a playroom with a climbing wall and a pool of candy-colored plastic balls.

Since 1991, according to the State Department, the U.S. government has contributed about $155 million to improve the lives of people with disabilities in areas affected by Agent Orange and leftover explosives.

The U.S.A.I.D. program that benefited Ms. Diem, the graphic designer, is limited in scope. Last year, just 45 Agent Orange victims in Dong Nai (out of 9,000) received no-interest loans of a little under $800. Some bought scooters, and others invested in goats, said Nguyen Van Thinh, 47, the leader of a club that has 260 members with disabilities.

Ms. Diem was among 11 women who were approved for smaller loans this year under a “social inclusion” program. Her commitment and grit are undeniable. After high school, she went to college away from home, persuading friends and strangers to carry her to class or the bathroom. She earned a degree in information technology.

Now, all she wants is a computer for doing her design work — support she was promised by the United States, which contaminated her country and gnarled her body.

“I want to feel connected with the world,” she told me. “I want to be less of a burden.”

Pope Francis will remain in a Rome hospital after being admitted late last week following a series of tests that indicated a “complex clinical picture,” the Vatican said on Monday, raising fresh concerns about the 88-year-old pontiff’s health.

Diagnostic tests carried out after Francis was taken to Policlinico A. Gemelli on Friday presented “a polymicrobial respiratory tract infection,” and his doctors had changed treatment accordingly, the Vatican said in a statement.

The complex clinical picture “would require an appropriate medical stay,” it said, without elaborating. In an evening update, the Vatican said Francis was in “stable” condition, with no fever.

A polymicrobial respiratory tract infection means that the Pope has a mix of microbes, like viruses or bacteria, infecting his lungs or another part of his respiratory tract. It usually is not a good sign because healthy people seldom get such infections, said Dr. James M. Musser, director of the center for infectious diseases at Houston Methodist Hospital.

Francis was hospitalized in 2023 with a respiratory infection, but was able to leave the hospital after three days.

Francis has had a busy schedule since New Year’s Eve, when he presided over the opening of the 2025 Jubilee, held every 25 years in the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican announced in early February that Francis had bronchitis, but he continued his activities, holding smaller audiences at the Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican guesthouse where he lives, but presiding over larger gatherings and Masses with thousands of pilgrims, including an outdoor Mass in St. Peter’s Square earlier this month.

In recent weeks, Francis had admitted to having respiratory difficulties. On several occasions, he asked aides to read his homilies and speeches for him.

After he entered the hospital, doctors prescribed complete rest. Subsequent medical updates said he was in “stable” condition.

The pope had part of a lung removed as a young man. In his autobiography, “Hope,” published last month, Francis wrote that in 1957, doctors cut away the upper lobe of his right lung after they found three large cysts. He spent days in an oxygen tent, he wrote. “The pain was terrible.”

His medical challenges have become more numerous with age. He has knee problems and sciatica that have caused a severe limp and, in recent years, have often required him to use a wheelchair, walker or cane.

The fact that the Pope uses a wheelchair can make him more susceptible to such respiratory infections, Dr. Musser said, because people who use wheelchairs often do not take the sort of deep breaths needed to adequately clear their lungs.

In 2021, Francis had colon surgery. After his bout with bronchitis in 2023, he was hospitalized again a few months later to undergo abdominal surgery for a hernia. Last year, he underwent diagnostic tests at the Gemelli hospital after a slight flu.

On Monday morning, Francis received communion, ate breakfast and read some newspapers after a restful night, said Matteo Bruni, a Vatican spokesman, adding that the pontiff was “in good spirits.” In an evening update, the Vatican said that Francis had also turned his attention to unspecified “work activities,” and had done some reading.

The Vatican said Francis was “touched by the many messages of affection and closeness that he continues to receive in these hours,” particularly from people who were also hospitalized and were sending him drawings and get well messages. “He prays for them and asks that they pray for him,” the Vatican said.

Several visitors to St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday shared their concerns about the pontiff’s health.

Sabrina Geroni, a clothing designer from Florence, was among the hundreds of pilgrims who walked through the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica, a central Jubilee ritual, and she prayed for Francis’ speedy recovery. “He’s our earthly shepherd and I feel very grateful to him,” she said.

Gina Kolata contributed reporting.

President Trump says he wants to “make a deal” to “STOP this ridiculous war” in Ukraine. His call with President Vladimir V. Putin, and a meeting expected this week between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, have raised expectations that negotiations could end three years of fighting.

But how would those talks actually work? Who would be involved? What could a deal look like?

The New York Times has been reporting on these questions since the early weeks of the war in 2022, when Ukraine and Russia held direct talks that failed to reach a peace agreement.

To sum up what we know at this point, here’s our guide to potential Ukraine peace talks.

Right now, Ukraine has few options for reversing Russia’s recent gains on the battlefield. That means that any deal is likely to involve painful concessions by Ukraine, which could be seen as Mr. Trump’s rewarding Mr. Putin’s aggression. It also means that Russia will almost certainly drive a hard bargain.

But Mr. Putin may have his own incentives for making a deal. Russia’s economy risks runaway inflation amid enormous spending on the war, while the military is suffering some 1,000 or more casualties a day. And a settlement over Ukraine could pave the way for a reduction of Western sanctions.

The talks would be exceedingly complicated. Many doubt that Mr. Putin will negotiate in good faith, while Europe and Ukraine fear that Mr. Trump will be tempted to strike a deal with the Kremlin over their heads.

Still, Russia and Ukraine did make headway toward striking a deal when they last negotiated directly, back in the spring of 2022. And some experts believe that an agreement is possible that would satisfy Mr. Putin while preserving some form of sovereignty and security for Ukraine.

Who’s at the table?

The Biden administration sought to isolate Russia diplomatically and said any negotiations about Ukraine’s fate had to involve the Ukrainians. Mr. Trump broke from that approach on Feb. 12, when he discussed Ukraine in a lengthy call with Mr. Putin and then said he would “inform” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of the conversation.

Now it’s Ukraine that appears isolated. Mr. Zelensky said he was not invited to discussions this week between top aides to Mr. Trump and their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia.

European countries may also be cut out — even though Europe’s total aid to Ukraine since the start of the war, roughly $140 billion, is greater than what the United States has provided.

Mr. Trump said he would “probably” meet Mr. Putin in Saudi Arabia soon. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey have already been mediating between Ukraine and Russia on matters like prisoner exchanges and navigation in the Black Sea.

Territory

Ukraine has said it will never recognize any change to its borders. Russia claims not just the roughly 20 percent of the country it already controls, but also a swath of Ukrainian-held land in four regions that it does not fully control.

A possible compromise: freeze the fighting.

Russia keeps control of the land it has already captured but stops fighting for more. Ukraine and the West don’t formally recognize Russia’s annexation, even as Russia retains its broader territorial claims. An agreement could stipulate that territorial disputes will be resolved peacefully at some point in the future — say, 10 or 15 years, as Ukrainian negotiators proposed for the status of Crimea in the 2022 peace talks.

And a wrinkle: Kursk.

Ukraine still holds around 200 square miles of territory in Russia’s Kursk region. Russia has rejected the idea that Ukraine could use that land as a bargaining chip in any future talks. But if talks start before Russia has managed to expel Ukrainian troops from there, Ukraine may still be able to find a way to trade a retreat from Kursk for concessions by Russia.

NATO and the E.U.

While Ukraine wants to reclaim the territory Russia has captured, it has also made clear that its future security is at least as important, meaning protection from renewed Russian aggression.

Ukraine describes NATO membership as the key to this protection. Russia describes the possibility of Ukraine joining the alliance as an existential threat to its own security.

The Trump administration has already made it clear that it expects Russia to get its way here.

Leaving open a path for Ukraine to join the European Union, but not NATO, could be presented as a compromise. Before the 2022 peace talks failed, Russian negotiators agreed to language in the draft treaty that said the deal would be “compatible with Ukraine’s possible membership in the European Union.”

Security guarantees

Absent NATO membership, Mr. Zelensky has floated the deployment of 200,000 foreign troops to Ukraine to safeguard any cease-fire. Analysts say the West can’t produce such a large force. Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said on Sunday that his country would be ready to commit an unspecified number of peacekeeping troops.

But Russia wants its own “security guarantees” to assure that Ukraine won’t try to rebuild its military capacity and recapture Russian-occupied land. It wants to cap the size of Ukraine’s military and ban foreign troops from the country.

Threading this needle is widely seen as the trickiest aspect of any negotiation. A team of experts led by Marc Weller, a Cambridge international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations, has drafted a potential agreement that envisions a compromise: deploying a small international force of 7,500 staffed by countries acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine to keep the peace at the front line.

The Weller proposal envisions immediate sanctions against either side if it restarts hostilities. It would allow Ukraine to hold limited joint exercises with other countries and cooperate with them on weapons production and military training.

There would be no permanent deployment of foreign troops, but Ukraine could host a small number of technical personnel. And Ukraine would agree to a ban on missiles with a range of more than 155 miles.

Cease-fire mechanics

The durability of any peace could hinge on the nuts and bolts of a cease-fire agreement.

Thomas Greminger, a former Swiss diplomat who was involved in monitoring the cease-fire in eastern Ukraine after 2015, flags three key issues.

The first is agreeing on the “line of contact” separating Russian from Ukrainian-controlled territory. Next there would need to be a “disengagement zone,” or buffer, between opposing forces, to prevent stray gunfire or misunderstandings from flaring into combat. Third, he said, there will need to be some way to hold both sides to account for cease-fire violations.

The language in the agreements “could be very technical” on issues like the disengagement zone and cease-fire enforcement, said Mr. Greminger, now the director of the Geneva Center for Security Policy think tank. But, he said, that language could be “quite decisive over whether the cease-fire holds.”

NATO in Eastern Europe

Mr. Putin claims his war isn’t just about Ukraine, but about forcing the West to accept a new security architecture in Europe.

Weeks before the invasion, he presented an ultimatum demanding that NATO stop expanding eastward and withdraw from much of Europe. And in his Feb. 12 call with Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin warned of “the need to eliminate the root causes of the conflict,” the Kremlin said.

That means Russia is likely to make demands that go well beyond the fate of Ukraine itself.

America’s allies are likely to argue that a retreat of NATO in Europe will increase the risk of a Russian invasion for countries like Poland and the Baltics. But Mr. Trump might be amenable to such a deal, given his skepticism about American deployments abroad.

All this will make for an incredibly complicated negotiation. Mr. Greminger, who has been working with experts close to governments with a stake in the war to game out how the talks could go, sees at least three negotiating tracks: U.S.-Russian, Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-European.

“You have at least these three levels,” he says. “There are no shortcuts.”

Trump and Putin

Mr. Putin also has demands that go beyond territory and security. In the 2022 peace talks, Russian negotiators sought to strip away Ukrainian identity, demanding that the country make Russian an official language and ban naming places after Ukrainian independence fighters. Those issues are likely to come up again.

Mr. Putin could also try to leverage a Ukraine settlement to get other benefits from Mr. Trump, like sanctions relief. But it is his apparent desire for a grand bargain with Washington, some analysts believe, that could represent his greatest incentive to cut a deal.

“Putin would like to have a longer-term, productive relationship with this administration,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former American under secretary of state with experience negotiating with the Russians. “He needs to be willing to make concessions.”

Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.