The scandal began with a tweet.

“The world wants to invest in Argentina,” Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, posted at 7:01 p.m. on Valentine’s Day, offering a code to buy a new cryptocurrency.

The digital coin was called $Libra, and it had been created 23 minutes earlier.

Over the next few hours, thousands of people invested. $Libra’s value skyrocketed.

Then it swiftly collapsed. The largest stakeholders had sold their coins, leaving almost everyone else with a collective $250 million in losses.

To cryptocurrency veterans, it was a classic “rug-pull.” A celebrity touts a new digital coin, prices soar and then insiders who own most of the coins pull the rug: They sell their stakes for a big profit at the expense of amateur investors who got in later.

To Argentina, it was a national scandal. The president, critics said, had just scammed his constituents. The opposition called for impeachment. Argentine citizens filed a dozen criminal complaints. A federal prosecutor opened an investigation, with Mr. Milei as a target.

Then Mr. Milei left for Washington. At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, he gave a combative speech ahead of President Trump, the other president who promoted a new cryptocurrency this year that soared and then crashed. That coin, $Trump, generated enormous profits for insiders and a cumulative $2 billion in losses for more than 800,000 other investors.

Mr. Trump has claimed ignorance. “I don’t know if it benefited” me, he said. “I don’t know much about it.” (The Trump family and its business partners earned nearly $100 million in trading fees alone on the coin.)

Following the ballooning $Libra scandal in Argentina, Mr. Milei took a similar approach. He did not earn a cent, he said. Instead, he blamed a small start-up in Singapore, KIP Protocol, that few in the crypto industry had heard of.

“You’ll notice that the company that organized the launch, KIP, explicitly stated that I had nothing to do with it,” he said in a prime time interview last week.

But Mr. Milei’s story has begun to unravel, showing how crypto and politics have increasingly blended to enrich the powerful and take from most everyone else.

The origins of the $Libra scandal trace back to a conference in Argentina last year, where an American crypto consultant and an Argentine business partner of Mr. Milei tried to sell access to the president, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The New York Times. It eventually led to meetings in the presidential offices and a planned partnership with Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports.

Since the crash, evidence has emerged contradicting the president’s claims; critics in Argentina have accused his inner circle of taking bribes; and the American consultant, whom Mr. Milei last month referred to as an adviser, has admitted to amassing $100 million from the scheme.

“This is an insider’s game,” the American consultant, Hayden Davis, said about crypto coins in a video last week. “This is like an unregulated casino.”

‘A little something-something’

The crypto world was excited about Mr. Milei.

A libertarian economist, he had said he wanted to open his financially scarred nation to new currencies. So when it was announced that he would speak at a crypto conference in Buenos Aires in October, industry leaders descended.

The conference was organized by Mauricio Novelli, a polished 29-year-old stock trader with yearslong connections to Mr. Milei.

In 2020, Mr. Milei began teaching at Mr. Novelli’s small investing academy and became the school’s pitchman, posting repeatedly about it online, up until he was president. In 2022, he posted about a new crypto project from Mr. Novelli, calling it “an economic model that’s sustainable over time.” Not long after, it collapsed.

At the conference, Mr. Novelli was charging sponsors $50,000 for a speaking slot and a meet-and-greet with Mr. Milei, according to four attendees who paid the fee.

Yet those people said the meeting with the president turned out to be a quick group photo. To get more time, two of them said, conference organizers told them it would cost more.

“They’d say, ‘Hey, you know, give us a little something-something and we can get you a meeting,” said Charles Hoskinson, a cryptocurrency billionaire who founded one of the industry’s largest platforms, Cardano.

Another attendee said Mr. Novelli offered a meeting with the president if the person signed a $500,000 contract for vague “consulting services,” according to a copy of the document viewed by The Times.

But Mr. Novelli was not the only one selling access to Mr. Milei.

Mr. Davis — a 28-year-old with curly blonde hair and garish gold glasses whom Mr. Novelli had met at a crypto event in Denver — was also telling conference attendees that he had “control” over Mr. Milei and could broker deals, according to messages viewed by The Times.

“Everything from Milei tweeting” to “all the front-facing Milei stuff basically, showing up at things, et cetera — I have control over a lot of those levers,” Mr. Davis said in an audio message to an entrepreneur, obtained by The Times.

“But,” he added, “there’s a cost.” He insinuated that cost could be in the millions of dollars. “I’m not trying to screw anyone over,” he said, using an expletive.

Another entrepreneur said Mr. Davis made an even more brazen offer in writing: He would deliver a meeting with Mr. Milei and a partnership with the Argentine government in exchange for roughly $90 million in cryptocurrencies over 27 months, according to a copy of the proposal viewed by The Times.

There is no evidence that Mr. Milei was aware of the proposals. Mr. Davis and Mr. Novelli, through spokesmen, declined to comment.

Three months before the conference, in July, Mr. Novelli and Mr. Davis visited Argentina’s presidential offices, according to government records obtained by the Argentine newspaper La Nación. The records show their host was the president’s sister and chief of staff, Karina Milei.

In November, they visited the presidential offices again. Afterward, Mr. Novelli and Mr. Davis toasted with champagne at the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, telling others they had just signed a deal with the president, according to La Nación.

Then, on Jan. 30, Mr. Milei posted a photo of himself and Mr. Davis, saying the American “was advising me on the impact and applications of” crypto-related technology.

‘The KIP Protocol project’

Two weeks after that post, a tech entrepreneur in Singapore got an unexpected call from Mr. Novelli.

The entrepreneur, Julian Peh, founder of a start-up called KIP Protocol, said he had met Mr. Novelli at the October conference. Mr. Peh was one of the few attendees who actually got a sit-down meeting with Mr. Milei. (He said he paid only to sponsor the event.)

But over the next few months, Mr. Peh said, he had no contact with the Argentine president or his office. Then Mr. Novelli called him on Feb. 13 to pitch him on a new project, he said: the launch of a cryptocurrency called $Libra that would ultimately finance small businesses in Argentina.

Mr. Novelli described a plan that involved Mr. Davis launching $Libra and Mr. Peh’s company, KIP, distributing funds to businesses, Mr. Peh said.

It was not his company’s forte — KIP built technology related to artificial intelligence. But Mr. Peh said he agreed anyway.

A day later, $Libra launched with Mr. Milei’s tweet. The president linked to a website describing the $Libra project as having “a clear mission: to boost the Argentine economy.” At the bottom was a single disclaimer: “Private Initiative project Developed by KIP Network Inc © 2025.”

It was before dawn in Singapore. Mr. Peh said he awoke to confused messages from colleagues: What was $Libra?

With the price crashing after the initial boom, Mr. Peh said Mr. Novelli then directed him to post a message on X supporting the coin. Mr. Novelli provided the exact text in English and Spanish, he said.

Mr. Peh said he followed the instructions. “The $LIBRA currency has been a success. We want to thank everyone for their trust and support,” KIP’s account posted. “We would like to clarify that this is a private enterprise project, President Milei was not and is not involved in the development of this project, as he has mentioned himself. This is an entirely private enterprise.”

Two minutes later, Mr. Milei’s account disowned $Libra. “I obviously have no connection whatsoever,” his account posted on X. “I was not aware of the project’s details.” He deleted his initial post promoting $Libra.

Ten hours after that, Mr. Milei’s office released a statement blaming Mr. Peh and calling $Libra the “KIP Protocol project.” The statement said Mr. Peh had pitched the project to Mr. Milei — and that Mr. Peh had introduced the president to Mr. Davis as a KIP representative.

“Mr. Davis had no and does not have any connection with the Argentine government and was presented by the KIP Protocol representatives as one of their partners,” the president’s office said.

That appeared to contradict Mr. Davis’s earlier visits to the presidential offices, including before Mr. Milei and Mr. Peh met.

Mr. Novelli’s company also released a statement blaming Mr. Peh and Mr. Davis for $Libra. It said he had earned nothing.

Mr. Peh said he realized that he had become the fall guy. KIP “became a convenient party to provide cover for other parties,” the company said in a statement.

‘Deeply rigged’

Part of crypto’s appeal is that transactions are publicly trackable. So experts dug into $Libra — and found a mess.

More than 10,000 crypto accounts, representing 86 percent of investors, lost a combined $251 million, according to Nansen, a crypto data firm.

At the same time, the data showed that accounts connected to $Libra’s launch reaped enormous sums.

Typically, creators of a new cryptocurrency control a large percentage of the supply. But rules programmed into the currency often block those shares from being sold for a set period of time, preventing insiders from taking profits and crashing the price.

However, the crypto accounts that created $Libra could sell immediately. Within hours, those accounts — which controlled 80 percent of the coins — had cashed out nearly $90 million, according to Bubblemaps, a crypto analysis firm.

Another $33 million in profits went to accounts that were created just hours before the launch — and that then quickly bought and sold $Libra after its release — suggesting that whoever controlled them may have known the coin was coming.

Investors were furious. “It was not only about the losses — it was about the insider activity,” said Nicolas Vaiman, chief executive of Bubblemaps. “It shows how deeply rigged the game was.”

‘Whose money is it?’

A crypto rug-pull is usually mysterious: The money disappears, and no one knows who took it.

Yet a day after $Libra crashed, Mr. Davis came forward. “I’m here to set the record straight,” he said in a video posted on X. “I am indeed Javier Milei’s adviser.”

Then he criticized Mr. Milei. In a statement, Mr. Davis said Mr. Peh was “completely innocent” and that “I can only assume that Milei’s associates attempted to shift blame onto Julian to shield themselves.”

After that, he gave two interviews on YouTube, including to Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder. Mr. Portnoy said he had a deal with Mr. Davis to promote $Libra, but pulled out at the last minute. “Thank Christ,” he said, adding an expletive.

In the interviews, Mr. Davis said he had controlled enormous amounts of $Libra and sold those stakes when prices were high. He also said the team that created Libra had quickly bought the coin right after it hit the market — a practice called “sniping” widely viewed as deceptive in crypto circles.

Now he had control of $100 million, he said, and wanted to make things right.

“Whose money is it?” Mr. Portnoy asked.

“I mean, it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s the, I mean, it’s the,” Mr. Davis replied, stammering. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s definitely not mine. It’s, it’s Argentina’s.”

There is no sign that Mr. Davis has returned any money — other than to Mr. Portnoy, who said he lost $5 million on $Libra.

In the interviews, Mr. Davis said so-called memecoins like $Libra and $Trump — crude, speculative cryptocurrencies tied to celebrities or online memes — were essentially rigged.

Data shows that some recent memecoins may have been backed by the same people.

A Bubblemaps analysis showed the crypto account that created $Libra was closely linked to the account that created $Melania, a memecoin promoted by Melania Trump that also collapsed. The two accounts were key cogs in a web of crypto wallets that transferred funds among one another, the analysis showed.

On YouTube, Mr. Davis said he was involved in $Melania but did not elaborate on his exact role.

Ms. Trump’s office declined to comment.

‘A careless president’

While the cryptoverse was erupting in outrage, Mr. Milei was buffeted by crisis in Argentina.

The stock market dipped. A key political ally, former president Mauricio Macri, called him “careless.” The press labeled the scandal “Cryptogate.”

A federal prosecutor has opened an investigation, including into Mr. Milei’s conduct, and Mr. Milei ordered Argentina’s anti-corruption office to investigate.

Then a more damning accusation arrived: La Nación and the crypto news site CoinDesk published text messages they said showed Mr. Davis telling someone he “owned” Mr. Milei because “I send $$ to his sister.”

Mr. Milei’s sister has long acted as the president’s gatekeeper, and he regularly refers to her as “the boss.”

Mr. Milei’s spokesman, Manuel Adorni, said bribery accusations were “insulting.” Mr. Milei and Ms. Milei did not respond to questions from The Times. Mr. Davis has since denied paying either of them.

When asked on television if any deputy earned money on $Libra, Mr. Milei answered: “That’s not for me to say. I have full confidence in all my officials.” He backed Mr. Novelli and again blamed Mr. Peh.

Yet he added that, regardless, he had little sympathy for the scam’s victims. “If you go to a casino and lose money, what’s your complaint?” he said. “They knew very well the risks.”

Three days later, another cryptocurrency billionaire posted that he wanted to bring a new crypto conference to Argentina.

“THANK YOU VERY MUCH,” Mr. Milei replied. “It would be a great opportunity for our country.”

David Feliba, Daniel Politi and Lucía Cholakian Herrera contributed reporting from Buenos Aires and Natalie Alcoba from Toronto. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Days before the start of Ramadan, lines of people snaked down the stairs outside a bank in Syria’s capital, Damascus, waiting for hours to withdraw the equivalent of about $15 for the requisite holiday shopping.

The new government has imposed severe daily withdrawal limits of about that amount at Syrian banks, dampening what would usually be a festive time as many struggle to buy even the basics for the holy fasting month.

“That can buy maybe a kilo and a half of meat,” said Sleiman Dawoud, a 56-year-old civil engineer among those waiting in the A.T.M. line to withdraw that $15 — 200,000 in Syrian pounds. “But what about the bread, and vegetables and fruits? Ramadan is coming, and we need to spend.”

Ra’if Ghnaim, 75, a retired civil servant, fretted about how he would afford the tradition of giving children small amounts of money at the end of Ramadan as he waited to take out some cash.

“How are we going to celebrate and give gifts to the children?” he asked.

This year, Ramadan falls three months after the ouster of the Assad dictatorship that ruled Syria with an iron first for more than five decades. The rebel coalition that has taken over the government in Damascus has instituted several economic changes.

It opened the market to imported products. It eliminated bread subsidies — making the staple food 10 times more expensive. It laid off thousands of public-sector employees. And it capped cash withdrawals at A.T.M.s.

The prices of many goods other than bread have fallen since the new government took over, but many Syrians still can’t buy them because of the withdrawal limits in a cash-based economy where the widespread use of credit cards and e-payments has never taken hold.

Getting cash out has become a part-time job of sorts as Syrians spend hours or even days trying to withdraw enough cash to live, much less splurge during a time of large family gatherings and feasts.

As Syrian pounds have dried up and the government has started shifting economic policy, the currency has begun to strengthen after more than a decade of weakening.

Before the Syrian civil war began in 2011, the exchange rate was about 50 Syrian pounds to the U.S. dollar. When the government was overthrown in December, it was about 15,000, but has since fallen.

The Syrian Central Bank, Economy Ministry and Interior Ministry did not respond to questions.

The Central Bank alluded to the withdrawal limits in a December statement, saying the measures would be temporary. But they have now lasted for months.

This month, a planeload of newly minted Syrian pounds arrived from Russia, where they are printed, according to the state news media. The amount was not made public.

“They indeed do not have enough bank notes. They have a liquidity crisis,” said Karam Shaar, a political economist and senior fellow at the New Lines Institute, a Washington-based think tank, who has been meeting with Syrian officials.

“The current monetary policy that the Central Bank is considering is not finalized, and it doesn’t seem to be coherent” he added.

More than 90 percent of Syrians live in poverty, and one in four is unemployed, according to the United Nations. And on the ground, and in long bank lines across the country, many are suffering.

“We’ll have to cancel the suhoor,” Mahmoud Embarak, a 60-year-old retired military officer, said of the pre-dawn meal that Muslims eat before the start of the daily fast.

He said that the new government had recently cut his pension and that his family was now living off his wife’s nursing pension.

“It won’t be as happy of a time as it has been in the past,” Mr. Embarak added.

Ahlam Kasem, 45, cringed at the mention of Ramadan.

She was waiting in the bank line to withdraw 200,000 Syrian pounds (about $15) from her monthly salary of 380,000 (about $28) as a civil engineer with the agriculture ministry.

“They told us the government doesn’t have any money, the Central Bank doesn’t have, the banks don’t have,” she said. “We have so many questions and there are no answers.”

So, along with her husband, she took a minibus from their town of Saboora, about 10 miles away, and paid 10,000 Syrian pounds each to get to an A.T.M. at the Damascus bank.

She will have to make another trip on another day to withdraw the rest of her salary.

That still won’t buy much for her family of five — much less for the large gatherings to break the fast characteristic of Ramadan.

“There won’t be dinner parties or anything” said Ms. Kasem, who is among the many civil servants who have been laid off with a severance of three months’ salary.

As she spoke, a man rapped on the bank’s metal door, trying to get the attention of an employee inside. No one came.

“We have now gotten to point in Syria where even a cup of coffee may be too much of a hardship for someone to offer you,” she said. “We’re a very social people, but we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t want to visit anyone so as not to put any pressure on them for even a cup of coffee, much less lunch or dinner.”

Those concerns were top of mind at the Bab Sraijeh market, a bustling cluster of shops and street vendors along a cobblestone street in the old city of Damascus. The sound of motorcycles driving through occasionally drowned out the competing offers that sellers were yelling out.

“Ten, ten, practically free,” a young man hollered repeatedly, offering a kilogram of olives for 10,000 pounds, less than one dollar.

At a small shop selling Ramadan decorations — wooden crescent moons, colorful lanterns and string lights — it was mostly quiet. Occasionally, someone would inquire about the price of an ornament and then walk off without buying anything.

“People don’t have money,” said Nour al-Hamwi, 37, who was helping her husband at the shop. “The banks don’t have money, Syria doesn’t have money.”

Last year, the items were flying off the shelves, her husband said. Now, people are buying only necessities.

“The Ramadan atmosphere will be weaker this year,” Anwar Hamid said.

Fatima Hussain Ali, 56, and her husband, Ha’il Ali Jasser, 59, were each carrying several stuffed grocery bags of spices, cheese and flour as they made their way through the market.

The staples of Ramadan — olive leaves, oil, rice, bulgur wheat — are cheaper than before the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad. But the couple, who have eight children, were still buying much less than in previous Ramadans.

“Prices are cheaper, but there isn’t money,” she said.

Except for bread, which has gone from 400 pounds to 4,000 pounds.

She doubted they would host any dinner parties this year. If they did, she joked, they might have to ask their guests to B.Y.O.B.: bring your own bread.

By seeking a peace deal with Kurdish militants, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is attempting something momentous that not only aims to end 40 years of violent insurgency inside Turkey but envisions ambitious change across the region.

The call on Thursday by Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., for his militants to lay down their arms followed months of negotiations and was a well thought out answer to the challenges Mr. Erdogan faces, said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.

At home it could earn Mr. Erdogan the Kurdish support he needs for constitutional changes to give the Turkish leader — who has steadily expanded his power over more than 20 years — another run at the presidency.

Farther afield, ending the conflict with Kurdish groups that are ranged across parts of Iraq, Syria and Turkey would release Turkey and its military of a huge burden. If Kurds in neighboring Syria follow suit, it has the potential to calm a longstanding regional conflict and help stabilize an allied, fledgling government in Damascus.

“This is a historic call,” Ms. Aydintasbas, said of Mr. Ocalan’s appeal. The proposal “has a lot to do with the geopolitical pressures building up in Turkey’s neighborhood, creating a sense of insecurity for both Turks and Kurds,” she said.

“The chaotic start of the Trump administration and the uncertainty about Syria’s future also seem to have made it evident to Ankara that it needs to consolidate on the home front,” Ms. Aydintasbas added, “and there is no better way to do it than a deal with Kurds.”

Mr. Ocalan’s militant group, the P.K.K., “will almost certainly” heed his appeal, she said. It has suffered militarily since attempting to fight urban battles in eastern Turkish cities in 2015 and has largely retreated to strongholds in the mountainous areas of Iraq.

But the Kurdish forces in Syria, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., were boosted by training and equipment from the Pentagon as they joined the United States in its operations against the Islamic State in Syria.

Turkey has long considered them a terrorist threat aimed at undermining security along its southern border.

Turkey has close ties with the rebel movement Hayat Tahrir al Sham that seized control of Syria in December after ousting the longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad. Turkish officials have made it clear that removing or diluting the perceived Kurdish threat on its borders is a priority in its dealings with the new government in Damascus.

Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish leader of the S.D.F., is a close follower of Mr. Ocalan and will most likely heed his appeal to turn to peaceful, democratic change, Ms. Aydintasbas said.

Mr. Abdi, in comments during an online news briefing on Thursday, said that Mr. Ocalan had informed him about the decision to lay down arms in a letter and had emphasized the value of peace and stability for the whole region.

Mr. Abdi welcomed the initiative, saying that it would resolve Turkey’s security concerns and ease the situation for his own forces in Syria. His priority was his own negotiations with the new government in Damascus, he said.

The idea for a peace agreement was first floated in October by a close political ally of Mr. Erdogan’s, the nationalist politician Devlet Bahceli.

Mr. Erdogan openly backed peace negotiations with the Kurds a decade ago before they broke down disastrously with fierce fighting breaking out in Kurdish cities. Perhaps because of that and lingering uncertainties about whether the plan will stick, he has remained slightly aloof from the peace overtures this time. Neither he nor any of his cabinet reacted to Mr. Ocalan’s call on Thursday.

But his ambitions in the region and beyond are well known. After taking in more than three million Syrian refugees since the Arab Spring uprising of 2011, he had been a strong supporter of the rebel groups fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and he still enjoys close ties with those groups now that they are in government.

At the same time, he has extended Turkey’s military and diplomatic reach into Africa and has offered Syria military training assistance for its army and air support by proposing the positioning of units of the Turkish air force in Syrian bases.

One of Turkey’s concerns is to curb interference from other countries into Syria, including Israel, which has advanced troops into parts of southern Syria and made overtures to the Syrian Kurds.

Mr. Erdogan will be also calculating for political gains at home from peace with the Kurds, who represent an important political force that has sided with a coalition of opposition parties against Mr. Erdogan.

The Kurds have already made clear that they are expecting political and legal safeguards in any deal. They would be likely to demand the release of political prisoners and changes in terrorism legislation and constitutional amendments, Ms. Aydintasbas said.

A deal with the Kurds could allow for constitutional changes that would remove ethnic divisions and give Kurds a devolution of power. It could also give Mr. Erdogan another run at the presidency, his former prime minister Binali Yildirim said in comments made in a speech in the city of Izmir, reported by Turkish media Friday.

“We are surrounded by instability, dangers and threats,” Mr. Yildirim said. “For this, stability, trust and, most importantly, a strong leader are needed. Therefore, the way should be opened for our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to run for president again. The new constitution should also foresee this.”

Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul.

The Palestinian Authority was carrying out one of the most extensive security operations in its history, pursuing armed militants in the West Bank city of Jenin. For weeks, the authority’s forces slowly advanced on the militants’ densely populated stronghold, Palestinian officials said.

When the Israeli military launched its own wide-scale raid there in January, the authority was expected to abandon its operation.

But it did not.

Instead, when dozens of militants fled to nearby villages, Palestinian security forces swooped in to arrest them, officials said. “We made very important progress in reinforcing law and order,” Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the spokesman for the authority’s security forces, said in a phone interview.

The authority, which has limited governing powers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, had for years largely ceded the fight against militants to Israel. But as questions swirl over whether it can take on governance and security in Gaza, the group’s leaders appear eager to demonstrate that they will not shy away from fighting — even if it means angering Palestinians who say the authority is abetting an operation that is destroying large parts of the West Bank and displacing tens of thousands.

Jenin, and in particular the Jenin camp, a sprawling neighborhood built for refugees in the aftermath of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, had become a haven for Iran-backed armed fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Over the years, they have grown more sophisticated in their ability to develop explosives and obtain advanced weaponry, like M16 rifles smuggled from Israel.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led an attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza, Israel has carried out scores of raids in the West Bank, including with airstrikes, killing many civilians. Israel says it carries out these raids in accordance with international law. The authority mostly avoided a direct confrontation with the militants, trying to encourage them to turn themselves in.

But in December, the authority decided to take more forceful action. Security forces had arrested an Islamic Jihad operative while he was picking up tens of thousands of dollars smuggled into the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.

The New York Times spoke to more than a dozen Palestinian officials about the operations in Jenin. They all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations and operational plans.

The militants responded by hijacking two government trucks and parading through the city, in a scene caught on video and widely shared on social media. The episode was a stark representation of the authority’s weakness: It was broad daylight and the trucks were draped in the flags of Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

The authority’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, was so enraged that he felt he had to act immediately after he saw the video, according to Palestinian officials.

The authority deployed elite forces and armored vehicles; it set up checkpoints and engaged in daily gun battles with militants in the camp. More than a dozen people were killed, including six security officers, a journalist, a woman and three teenage boys. It also led to the displacement of thousands and widespread losses of water and power.

Hundreds of people were arrested, Gen. Rajab said at a news conference in January, though it was unclear how many were gunmen.

The authority was cautious about making hasty moves on the militants, wary that could lead to a large number of civilian deaths, according to officials. After weeks in which the authority struggled to make progress in its operation, Israel raided Jenin.

It was widely assumed that the authority’s operation would end, but Palestinian security chiefs stayed in Jenin, directing intelligence-based arrest operations in nearby villages, some of the Palestinian officials said. The chiefs recently pulled back to Ramallah, the administrative headquarters for the authority, but arrest operations continue around Jenin, the officials said.

In the days after Israel raided the city, the authority’s security forces arrested 120 gunmen who had left the camp, General Rajab said on Wednesday.

The extent to which the authority and Israel have been coordinating on this operation is unclear. Both sides have long shared information and worked to avoid running into each other, several Palestinian officials said, a policy that many Palestinians have criticized.

General Rajab would only say that the authority was doing “what it needed to do” in Jenin. In the face of criticism from Palestinians, the authority has said that many of the militants have criminal backgrounds.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said at a news briefing in January that Israel and the authority maintained de-confliction protocols “to make sure we don’t get in each other’s way,” but he did not go into detail about how that has worked in Jenin.

Israel’s recent operation has inflicted some of the most severe damage in years, ripping up roads, demolishing dozens of buildings and killing more than 25 people in the broader Jenin area, according to the authority’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, has vowed that the military will remain there long term, raising alarm among authority officials.

Israel’s military has said it killed dozens of militants across several cities in the northern West Bank.

The authority has refused to step away from its operation in Jenin, arguing that it must seize every opportunity to subdue the militants, whom it has accused of giving Israel pretext to destroy the city.

That has hardly raised its standing among residents of the West Bank, who broadly see it as a corrupt entity that colludes with Israel. Many Palestinians also see the armed groups in Jenin as fighting for them against forces occupying the West Bank.

“They are two sides of the same coin,” said Shadi Abu Samen, 47, a resident of the Jenin camp, referring to Israel and the authority.

In phone interviews with The New York Times, militants in the Jenin Brigade of Islamic Jihad said they had taken up weapons to confront Israeli soldiers raiding their neighborhood. Abu Mohammed, a member of the brigade, said he believed the authority and Israel were pursuing a similar goal: “Eradicate the resistance and its spirit.”

“They want us to surrender but we won’t accept that,” said Abu Mohammed, 33, using his nom de guerre.

The Times spoke to Abu Mohammed before Israel’s latest operation in Jenin and has since been unable to reach him.

Some Palestinian analysts said that the focus on security wouldn’t be enough if neither Israel nor the authority made any attempt to improve living conditions as well.

“We’re talking about a place that lacks so many basic resources,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, the director of the Horizon Center, a Palestinian research group in Ramallah. “Any security operation needs to be accompanied by a social, economic, development operation.”

Civilians have paid a clear price for the operations. Almost all of the residents of the Jenin camp have been displaced over the past two months, according to the United Nations.

“We’re living through a violent storm,” said Hilal Jalamneh, 50, a resident of the camp. “The last bit of hope we were holding on to is now gone.”

A court in Vietnam sentenced one of the country’s most influential journalists to two and a half years in prison Thursday for “abusing democratic freedoms” with about a dozen posts on Facebook that criticized or questioned the government.

The journalist, Truong Huy San — known to many by his pen name, Huy Duc — was arrested in Hanoi, the capital, in June.

He was convicted under the criminal code for 13 articles he posted on his personal Facebook page between 2015 and 2024 that, according to state-run media, “negatively impacted state interests, as well as the legal rights of organizations and individuals.”

Mr. San’s family was not allowed into the courtroom.

Mr. San’s case has been closely watched by international human rights groups and journalists, in part to better understand the direction of a rising regional power and one-party state that has often signaled it wants to be seen as more open to the world and innovation — while frequently cracking down on speech and civil society organizations.

At least one of the posts from Mr. San that led to the charges involved arguments against heavy-handed policing. A screenshot of a deleted post from Mr. San last year that was preserved by the 88 Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit that focuses on human rights issues in Vietnam, declared: “A COUNTRY CANNOT DEVELOP BASED ON FEAR.”

By that point, his Facebook page had around 370,000 followers.

Shawn Crispin, the senior Southeast Asia representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Mr. San “was convicted and sentenced for gathering and publishing independent news, which Vietnam treats as a criminal offense.”

“San and all independent journalists wrongfully held behind bars in Vietnam should be freed immediately and unconditionally,” Mr. Crispin said.

Vietnam currently has at least 16 reporters in custody, according to CPJ’s latest global prison census — many of them held for posting on social media, which the government has tried to strictly regulate. Vietnam is the seventh worst jailer of journalists worldwide, based on the CPJ tally, tied with Iran and Eritrea.

According to state media, Mr. San, 63, told the authorities he did not intend to oppose the Communist Party or the state, but admitted that some content infringed upon the state’s interests “for which he said he was ‘very sorry.’”

Mr. San grew up in a staunch revolutionary family, on a state-run collective farm in central Vietnam, where he has said he excelled more at math than at literature.

In 10th grade, he volunteered for the Vietnamese army, calling in strikes with an artillery unit during a brutal border war with China that began in 1979.

Later, as a military journalist, he went on to cover Vietnam’s war against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

Starting in the late ’80s, he was known as a corruption-busting investigative reporter for Ho Chi Minh City’s popular newspaper, Tuoi Tre, where he often broke news with help from his military connections. His reporting frequently challenged Vietnam’s political culture during a period of fierce internal policy debates between conservatives and reformists.

There was more openness to diverging voices then, he later said, and in 2005, he left Vietnam to study at the University of Maryland on a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship, which connects people addressing critical global challenges.

When he returned to Vietnam in 2006, he started a blog that became popular for its social and political commentaries. The Vietnamese authorities shut it down in 2010.

His achievements also included a year at Harvard University on a Nieman Fellowship in 2012. While there, he finished writing a two-volume book, “The Winning Side,” a journalistic tour de force that quickly became the definitive account of Vietnamese history and politics from around the end of the war in 1975 through the ’90s.

Officially, the book is banned in Vietnam. But it has also been widely read, online and in hard copies passed among friends. Mr. San has said that he was simply hoping the book, as with his other writing, would provide an honest account of the country’s complex dynamics.

“All it does is try to relate what happened after 1975 and to explain why it happened the way that it did,” Mr. San said in an interview in 2013. “That’s all. I try not to accuse anyone of anything.”

In recent years, he had moved his commentary to Facebook. Many of his friends, in posts there this week, expressed gratitude that his sentence was not longer. Some promised to brew the best homemade liquor possible to celebrate when he is released.

King Charles III was not in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon. But his regal presence loomed over the meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, which felt at times less like a big-power showdown over Ukraine than a courtesy call between two Renaissance royal courts.

From the moment Mr. Starmer pulled an embossed letter from his breast pocket and handed it to Mr. Trump, with an invitation from the king for the president to make a state visit to Britain, the much-anticipated encounter between these two leaders relaxed into something friendlier, but also somehow less momentous.

“A beautiful man, a wonderful man,” Mr. Trump said, after poring over the two-page letter, which was signed “Charles R” in a bold, oversized hand not unlike that used by the president to sign dozens of executive orders.

It fell to Mr. Starmer to explain the diplomatic novelty represented by the invitation: Mr. Trump is the first elected leader in the modern era to be honored with two state visits to Britain. “This is really special,” Mr. Starmer told the assembled press corps. “This has never happened before. This is unprecedented.”

The prime minister might have added: Never has an elected British leader deployed the monarchy so transparently to win the favor of another head of state.

Mr. Starmer is well aware of Mr. Trump’s enchantment with the royal family. The president viewed his last state visit in 2019, during which Queen Elizabeth II threw him a lavish banquet at Buckingham Palace, as a highlight of his first term. Mr. Trump has lately taken to referring to himself in royal terms: “LONG LIVE THE KING!” he posted on social media, after moving to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program.

With Mr. Trump on the brink of an epochal split with Britain and the rest of Europe over how to deal with Russia’s war on Ukraine, Mr. Starmer apparently calculated that a little royal stardust might bridge the gap — or at least paper it over.

On some counts, he seemed to have succeeded.

Mr. Trump gave Mr. Starmer little comfort on his biggest ask: that the United States provide a security “backstop” for British and European troops that could keep the peace after a potential Trump-brokered settlement between Ukraine and Russia. But he won Mr. Trump’s endorsement of a deal relinquishing British sovereignty over a string of strategically important islands in the Indian Ocean. And he got a welcome sign that Britain might wriggle out of American tariffs.

Back home, Mr. Starmer won praise, even from the normally antagonistic right-wing press. “What an Unlikely Bromance!” The Daily Mail said. “Special Delivery,” said The Sun, over a photo of a tickled Mr. Trump showing off the invitation from Charles. “Keir’s Trump Card,” said the more reliably friendly Daily Mirror.

Given all the ways that the meeting could have gone wrong, Mr. Starmer returned to London with a tidy political victory. Mr. Trump’s apparent approval of his deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius in return for the right to keep operating a British American military base on Diego Garcia, will deprive the opposition Conservative Party, as well as the right-wing disrupter Nigel Farage, of a major talking point against Mr. Starmer’s Labour government.

Mr. Starmer also got credit from Mr. Trump for arguing his case on why Britain should be spared the tariffs that Mr. Trump appears ready to impose on the European Union. The president said he expected Britain and the United States to strike a trade deal that would make tariffs unnecessary.

“He was working hard, I’ll tell you that,” Mr. Trump said, after Mr. Starmer lobbied him over a lunch of salad, grilled sea bass and chocolate caramel cake. “He earned whatever the hell they pay him over there.”

Still, on the most critical item on Mr. Starmer’s agenda, the prime minister made little headway. Mr. Trump brushed aside questions about whether the United States would provide a security guarantee to Ukraine to prevent President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia from launching another invasion. Mr. Trump insisted Mr. Putin would “keep his word” if a peace deal was reached.

The presence of American workers in Ukraine, Mr. Trump added, presumably there to help extract the rare-earth minerals that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has agreed to share with the United States, would be an insurance policy to prevent Russia from attacking Ukraine again.

Asked if he would come to the aid of British troops if they were targeted by Russia in Ukraine, Mr. Trump equivocated. “I’ve always found about the British, they don’t need much help,” he said. “They can take care of themselves very well.” Then he added, “If they need help, I’ll always be with the British, OK?”

That fell short of Mr. Starmer’s hope for an ironclad American security guarantee. But like President Emmanuel Macron of France, who met Mr. Trump on Monday, Mr. Starmer was determined to avoid a public split with the president over the issue. He lavished praise on Mr. Trump for his peacemaking efforts, adding only that it “can’t be peace that rewards the aggressor or that gives encouragement to regimes like Iran.”

Fresh from announcing a landmark increase in military spending and back in London, where he will play host Sunday to a meeting of 18 leaders to discuss Ukraine, Mr. Starmer has rebranded his premiership. No longer is he defined solely by his failure to jump-start Britain’s torpid economy.

“The first few months of the Labour government were confusing for a lot of people,” said Steven Fielding, a political historian at the University of Nottingham. “In a sense, this has given him an identity as a patriotic leader who supports Ukraine and who is willing to stand up to Trump and Putin.”

And yet, at the White House, Mr. Starmer was so solicitous that he appeared at times to be less a world leader than a well-mannered messenger for one. When Mr. Starmer was asked by a reporter what he made of Mr. Trump’s desire to annex Canada — of which King Charles is the ceremonial head of state — he replied, “I think you’re trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist.”

“That’s enough, thank you,” said a clearly irritated Mr. Trump, cutting off the reporter and gesturing for the next question.

Earlier, in the Oval Office, Mr. Starmer dutifully performed his role as a courtier for the king. It was a strange turn of events for a Labour leader who once told a filmmaker, “I often used to propose the abolition of the monarchy.” He has long since disavowed such statements as youthful indiscretions, and even has a knighthood that was bestowed by Charles.

Sir Keir, taking back the letter from Mr. Trump, said that the president’s last state visit had been a “tremendous success” and that “His Majesty the king wants to make this even better than that. So, this is truly historic.”

“What I haven’t got yet is your answer,” Mr. Starmer added, laughing anxiously as he perched on his chair next to the president.

“The answer is yes,” Mr. Trump replied, drawing out the words as he turned to the forest of cameras and microphones. “On behalf of our wonderful first lady, Melania, and myself, the answer is yes.”