When he returned to Syria recently for the first time in 12 years, Kazem Togan asked the passport control agent to check whether he “had a name” — meaning that he was among the millions of citizens named on wanted lists under the ousted Assad dictatorship.

“You’re wanted by branch 235,” the man told him, smiling as he delivered the news. “The intelligence branch.”

Mr. Togan, a journalist who worked for opposition Syrian media when the old government was in power, said he was thrilled.

“Today, every Syrian asks as a matter of routine, ‘Was I wanted?’” he said. “Anyone who was detained by the Assad regime or wanted by the Assad regime, there is a measure of pride.”

For more than five decades, the dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father before him ruled Syria by terror. Anyone wanted by any of the regime’s numerous intelligence, military or security branches was named on lists that could be checked at airports, border crossings or police stations and risked disappearing into the prison system.

This was known in Syria as “having a name.”

Those who spent their entire lives terrified by the prospect of having a security file are now openly asking officials about their status under the former government and bragging about it openly in conversation or on social media. To have been wanted by a government that tortured or killed millions of its own citizens to hold on to power is a badge of honor — proof that you stood up against oppression.

Some of those formerly wanted cite a line from the 10th-century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi: “If someone who is deficient criticizes me, it is a testimony that I am perfect.”

In addition to those people the government viewed as threats, such as anti-government protesters and armed rebels, Syrians could end up having a name for anything from making a political joke among friends to carrying foreign currency or even living abroad for too long.

Many of the wanted were men, in large part because many evaded mandatory military service and also were the ones who took up arms against the Assad regime. But women, too, and even children, were on the lists.

If they were caught, they could disappear into the old regime’s notorious prison system, where torture and executions were rife and from which many never emerged.

The danger of being wanted and caught drove millions of Syrians into exile outside the country or into hiding within it.

It also drove many anti-government activists and rebel fighters to adopt a nom de guerre throughout the civil war to shield both themselves and their families from ending up on the wanted lists.

Mr. Togan, 36, the opposition journalist, recorded his encounter in January with the passport control agent as he returned from Saudi Arabia, where he has been living. He then posted it on social media.

No reason was listed on his file for why he was wanted.

“Imagine if I had come to Syria before the fall of this criminal regime?” he said.

When the Syrian rebels who ousted Mr. al-Assad in December began to set up their own government, they inherited an entire bureaucracy and gained access to databases and intelligence files that were kept on millions of Syrians. The trove of documents could be used in the future to pursue justice and accountability for the crimes of the dictatorship.

An Interior Ministry official said in a recent interview with a Syrian television channel that more than eight million Syrians were wanted by the old regime.

“Of course, we have forgiven a lot of these, like the issue of being wanted for reserve military duty or conscription,” said the official, Khaled al-Abdullah. “This is a big chunk. We’ve set these aside.”

But the new government said it would not dismiss previous civil court judgments or criminal charges, he said.

Tamer Turkmane, 35, recently came home to Syria for the first time in years. When he crossed from Turkey, where he had been living, the agents did not check his past status.

But when he left the country through the border crossing with Lebanon, he said the passport control officer asked him: “‘What did you do that multiple regime branches were after you?’”

Mr. Turkmane said he had just laughed.

He had known that he was wanted because relatives who lived in Homs had been threatened by security officials in an attempt to pressure him to turn himself in or stop documenting human rights violations by the old regime. But he had not known the details about which specific branches of the government were after him.

At the beginning of the Syrian uprising against Mr. al-Assad’s rule, Mr. Turkmane had founded the Syrian Revolution Archive — a database of videos, photos and other information documenting the revolt turned civil war. He was sought by several different military and internal security branches.

“I was so proud,” he said.

He asked the passport officer to snap a quick photo of the screen showing his file to share on Instagram. Many of the comments on his post were congratulations.

At the immigration and passport ministry in the city of Aleppo on a recent day, the stairs outside the building were packed with lines of men and women trying to push forward and through the one open door to renew passports, replace lost national ID cards and check on their previous security status.

On the second floor, Ahmad Raheem, a 15-year employee in the archives department, said he spent his days at a computer, running checks on those coming in to get new documents.

A man who had been outside the country for 12 years handed over his Syrian ID card to Mr. Raheem. On the computer screen, he could see that the man had been wanted for evading military duty — a charge that just two months earlier would have landed him in a military prison or sent him to fight on a front line of the civil war.

“That’s it, sir. You don’t have anything,” Mr. Raheem told him, not mentioning the charge and handing him back his ID.

Afterward, Mr. Raheem explained that he did not offer up the information on who was previously wanted unless specifically asked because he does not want people to worry somehow that the new government was pursuing these regime-era charges.

Fuad Sayed Issa, the founder of Violet Organization, a Syria-based charity, was leaving the Damascus airport in February, heading back to Turkey, where he had been living during the civil war. He said the passport control agent paused as he scanned his passport on the computer.

“‘Am I wanted?’” Mr. Issa, 29, asked.

“‘Yes. You are wanted by several security branches,’” Mr. Issa recalled the agent telling him.

He was wanted by the criminal security branch and immigration control and for evading military service.

“For us, these things are funny,” said Mr. Issa, who was part of an early warning network of observers in rebel-held territory who would notify civilians of incoming airstrikes by Syrian and Russian warplanes during the civil war.

The Assad regime would go after us “as if we were terrorists,” he said.

During a call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine this week, President Trump floated a highly unusual idea: The United States could take control of Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

“He said that the United States could be very helpful in running those plants with its electricity and utility expertise,” the White House said in a statement after the call on Wednesday. “American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure.”

The idea surprised officials and energy experts in Kyiv. Mr. Zelensky appeared to reject it on Thursday, saying that nuclear plants were state-owned and could not be privatized, although he welcomed economic cooperation with the U.S. side. He added that the issue of U.S. ownership of the plants had not been directly addressed during the call.

Only one of Ukraine’s four nuclear plants — the Zaporizhzhia plant, now under Russian control — had been discussed in the conversation, Mr. Zelensky said.

“If the Americans are thinking about how to find a way out of this situation, if they want to take it away from the Russians, invest in its restoration, this is an open question,” he told a news conference during a visit to Norway.

Beyond the confusion over what had been discussed, one thing was clear: Mr. Trump wants a big economic stake in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump has previously demanded access to Ukraine’s mineral resources, and the White House statement echoed an argument he has already applied to a potential minerals deal, that U.S. economic involvement in Ukraine serves as its best security guarantee, because Russia would be less likely to target a country where America has economic interests.

So what could the United States’ interests be in Ukraine’s nuclear sector, and what challenges might it face?

U.S. Economic Interests

Ukraine’s Soviet-era nuclear power plants have been the backbone of its energy network during the war, supplying up to two-thirds of the country’s electricity. While Moscow has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s thermal and hydroelectric power plants in an effort to cripple its grid, it has avoided striking nuclear facilities, which could trigger a radiological disaster.

Against that background, the Ukrainian government has initiated plans to build more nuclear reactors, arguing that it is the only viable solution to ensuring long-term energy security.

This is where America’s business interests could come into play.

Shortly before the war, Westinghouse, an American nuclear technology company, signed a deal with Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company, to build five reactors. After Russia attacked, the number was increased to nine and the two companies agreed to further cooperate to deploy smaller plants in Ukraine.

For Westinghouse, it was a breakthrough after years of struggling to enter a Ukrainian nuclear market long dominated by Rosatom, the Russian nuclear power giant.

Westinghouse has a special interest in the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Russia captured the plant in March 2022, and it no longer supplies electricity to the Ukrainian grid. But before the war, it used fuel and technology from Westinghouse.

Olga Kosharna, a Ukrainian nuclear safety expert, said that Russia’s capture of the Zaporizhzhia plant had raised concerns at Westinghouse about the potential theft of its intellectual property. In 2023, the U.S. Energy Department warned in a letter to Rosatom that the company could face prosecution under U.S. law if it used Westinghouse technology at the plant.

Andrian Prokip, an energy expert with the Kennan Institute in Washington, said that Westinghouse would “definitely benefit” from a return of the plant to Ukrainian hands, as it would expand its market.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump discussed the fate of the Zaporizhzhia plant with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in a call on Tuesday as he had vowed to.

Westinghouse did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A current Ukrainian official and a former one, both with knowledge of the talks between the United States and Ukraine, also said Kyiv had emphasized to Mr. Trump that if the United States wanted access to Ukrainian minerals, it would require the Zaporizhzhia plant’s power-generating capacity, because mineral extraction and processing is energy intensive.

Possible Challenges

For one thing, all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are owned by Energoatom, and Ukrainian law prohibits their privatization.

Amending Ukraine’s laws to allow for U.S. ownership would be politically sensitive in a post-Soviet country where many key industries remain state-owned.

Ukraine has engaged in a wave of privatization during the war. But privatizing Energoatom — the state-owned company that generates the most revenue — would likely be a sticking point.

“I expect there would be great resistance to this idea in Ukraine,” said Victoria Voytsitska, a former Ukrainian lawmaker and senior member of Parliament’s energy committee. “From both sides of the political spectrum.”

Mr. Zelensky alluded to the issue in his news conference after his call with Mr. Trump. If Russia returned the Zaporizhzhia plant to Ukraine — a prospect that many in Ukraine deem unlikely — “simply handing over the plant” to the United States would not be possible, Mr. Zelensky said, because “it’s ours and it’s our land.”

Making plants operational again after three years of war would also pose a considerable challenge. Mr. Zelensky cited a period of up to two and a half years to get the degraded Zaporizhzhia plant running again.

Further, although all six Zaporizhzhia reactors have been shut down, they still require energy to power critical safety systems and water to circulate in their cores to prevent a meltdown.

But the power lines providing power to the plant have been cut on several occasions in the war, and the destruction of a nearby dam, possibly at Russia’s direction, has reduced access to cooling water, raising the risks of a nuclear accident.

On Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky described his discussions with Mr. Trump about the plant as “positive steps.” But he added, “I’m not sure we will get a result quickly.”

The Israeli government around midnight on Thursday approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel’s ouster of the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, a move that has further roiled a deeply divided country still at war.

The cabinet unanimously decided that the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, would be removed from his post on April 10, or sooner if another director is named, according to a statement released by the prime minister’s office shortly after midnight.

But in a stark challenge to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Bar refused to attend the nighttime meeting over his dismissal. Instead, he sent a stinging letter addressed to the government stating that the process was illegal and that the prime minister’s motives were “fundamentally flawed.”

The attempt to fire Mr. Bar is likely to be contested in the country’s Supreme Court.

The clash comes just days after Mr. Netanyahu announced his intention to fire Mr. Bar, citing a lack of personal trust between them, prompting street protests in Jerusalem.

It also comes after Israel’s military resumed a deadly campaign in Gaza that has raised concern among many Israelis about the fates of hostages still held in the enclave. Sirens warning of incoming rocket fire from Gaza sent Israelis in the Tel Aviv area running for cover on Thursday for the first time in months.

The Shin Bet is deeply involved in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, providing intelligence and targets. By law, the agency is also tasked with protecting Israeli democracy.

In his letter, Mr. Bar rejected the idea that any lack of personal trust between himself and Mr. Netanyahu had affected the work of the agency, and he said that the prime minister had not presented any concrete examples that would justify his dismissal or allow him to contest it in a proper hearing.

Mr. Bar also suggested that the hasty attempt to oust him was intended to undermine “serious cases that the Shin Bet is investigating at this time.” For months, Mr. Bar had angered Mr. Netanyahu by investigating officials in the prime minister’s office over claims of leaked documents and work for people connected to Qatar. Mr. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing.

The discord between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Bar goes to the heart of a broader battle playing out over the nature and future of Israel’s democracy and the rule of law. Critics of Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history, accuse it of working to reduce the authority of independent state watchdogs and to remove checks and balances on the powers of the government, which holds a narrow majority in Parliament.

The plan to fire Mr. Bar on grounds of personal trust has also raised public concerns that future appointments may be based primarily on loyalty to the prime minister.

Thousands protested in Jerusalem on Wednesday in anticipation of the move, and more protests took place on Thursday. By lunchtime, a long column of academics had marched in stormy weather from a campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem toward one of Mr. Netanyahu’s private residences, beating on drums, chanting, “Democracy!” and scuffling with police officers after trying to break through a barricade.

Some prominent opposition figures joined the demonstrators. Video footage from the scene showed police officers aggressively pushing protesters, including Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of the military and now the leader of the center-left Democrats party, who ended up on the ground. The police used a water cannon and sprayed protesters with a foul-smelling liquid in an effort to disperse them.

The new protests recall weekly demonstrations in 2023 against attempts to overhaul the judiciary to reduce its power as a check on the government, with business leaders at one point joining labor unions to hold a national strike. Those protests came to an abrupt halt with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that ignited the war on Oct. 7, 2023, though the broad sense of national solidarity that prevailed then is now fraying.

Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have made accusations of overreach against the judiciary and other independent branches, saying that they have hampered the government’s freedom to make decisions and to represent the will of voters.

Mr. Netanyahu has been under police investigation and is on trial on charges of corruption, which he denies. He has repeatedly accused a liberal “deep state” of conducting a witch hunt against him and his family.

The Shin Bet is investigating officials in the prime minister’s office over claims that they had leaked secret documents to the media and also worked for people connected to Qatar, an Arab state close to Hamas. The investigation, called “Qatargate” in the local news media, is continuing in secrecy under a sweeping gag order.

Mr. Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing and his office has dismissed the episode as “fake news.” The Qatari government did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Bar, who has led the Shin Bet since 2021, said in an earlier public statement that the expectation of “personal trust” was in opposition to the public interest.

Mr. Bar and the Shin Bet have taken responsibility for their part in the intelligence failure that led to the Hamas-led attack, which resulted in the deadliest single day for Israelis since the foundation of their state in 1948.

But in a summary of the agency’s internal probe into its conduct issued earlier this month, the Shin Bet also pointed to years of lenient government policy toward Hamas and Gaza as a major contributing factor, likely angering Mr. Netanyahu.

Appearing emboldened domestically, as well as in Gaza, by the staunch support of the U.S. administration, Mr. Netanyahu made common cause with President Trump in a blunt social media post late Wednesday.

“In America and in Israel, when a strong right wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will,” he wrote. “They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”

The billionaire Elon Musk, a close ally of Mr. Trump, replied with a red “100” emoji, suggesting that he agreed with Mr. Netanyahu.

Many Israelis view the country’s democracy as increasingly fragile. Israel has no formal written constitution, only one legislative chamber and a president whose role is mostly ceremonial and symbolic.

The current president, Isaac Herzog, issued a video statement on Thursday in which he warned against unilateral actions that he said could harm Israel’s social cohesion and resilience.

Mr. Herzog did not specifically mention the government or the ousting of Mr. Bar, but referring to new call-up notices sent to thousands of reserve soldiers, he said, “It is not possible to send our children to the front and at the same time to make controversial moves that deeply polarize the nation.”

By taking the vote straight to the government on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu was also defying a legal opinion of the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, who advised that the dismissal of Mr. Bar must first be approved by an advisory committee that oversees senior appointments.

Ms. Baharav-Miara, who was appointed by the previous government, has frequently clashed with the current one. Prominent members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet have said that after Mr. Bar’s removal, the attorney general will be the next.

Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv, Myra Noveck in Jerusalem and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad in Haifa, Israel, contributed reporting.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary pioneered many of the themes dear to conservatives in the United States, railing for years against “migration insanity,” “the woke virus” and “gender madness.”

Now Mr. Orban is engaged in an effort that veers away from the orthodox conservative view that the state should stay out of the economy. He’s trying to set the price of eggs and other goods.

Unable to curb Hungary’s inflation rate, the highest in the European Union, and facing a surge of support for a political rival, Mr. Orban last week ordered price controls on 30 basic foodstuffs. And he accused supermarkets of price gouging, particularly on eggs and butter.

Mr. Orban said the Hungarian government would starting this week force supermarkets to bring down their prices by ensuring that what they charge for essential foods does not exceed a 10 percent markup on what they cost wholesale. The current markup for eggs, he said, was an “unacceptable” 40 percent.

“Prices don’t rise, they are raised,” Mr. Orban thundered, blaming inflation on grocery stores, the biggest of which in Hungary are foreign companies like Britain’s Tesco and Austria’s Spar.

Hungary has been hailed by many American conservatives (and President Trump) as a beacon for how a country should be run. But the move by Mr. Orban underlines how he has struggled to manage the thing many Hungarians care about most: their country’s ailing economy.

Economic troubles have weakened Mr. Orban at home and abroad. The Hungarian Economic Research Institute, an independent body, reported recently that its business confidence index had “slipped to a 50-month low.”

Those troubles have badly dented Mr. Orban’s popularity ahead of an election next year that, according to some opinion polls, his governing Fidesz party could lose to an upstart opposition movement led by Peter Magyar, a former party loyalist.

Mr. Magyar has rocketed to national fame as the leader of a mass movement built on denunciations of Mr. Orban over Hungary’s “staggering cost-of-living crisis,” its faltering public services and an economic playing field tilted in favor of businesses controlled by the prime minister’s relatives and political allies.

In Budapest on Saturday, Mr. Magyar drew tens of thousands of anti-government protesters to a rally commemorating Hungary’s failed 1848 revolution, far more than attended a similar event held earlier in the day by Mr. Orban.

Mr. Magyar mocked Marton Nagy, the economy minister, for trying to dictate the price of sour cream, a Hungarian staple, by “circling numbers with a ballpoint pen to see how much the price can be cut” while Mr. Orban, his family and friends “become rich stealing your money.” The crowd roared.

Erika Lapos, a retiree who traveled more than 100 miles with her husband from their home in northeastern Hungary to attend Mr. Magyar’s rally, blamed corruption for the weak economy. “Is not just a scandal, it is a crime,” she said.

Mr. Orban had until recently largely succeeded in deflecting criticism of his economic record and corruption by blaming high prices on the war in Ukraine. He also sought to focus public attention on issues like illegal immigration and his false accusations that the European Union was trying to turn Hungarian children transgender or gay.

But the Ukraine war and migration no longer dominate voters’ concerns, said Agoston Mraz, director of the Nezopont Institute, which conducts polls for Mr. Orban’s government.

“The inflation issue is now the most important by far,” he said.

Still, eager to change the topic and rev up Mr. Orban’s conservative base, his supporters in Parliament on Tuesday amended a law on public assembly to ban gay pride parades, the latest in a series of efforts to target the country’s L.G.B.T.Q. community.

But there’s no escaping the economic realities.

Overall, Hungarian food prices in February, according to official figures released last week, were 7.1 percent higher than a year earlier, meaning that food is now more than 80 percent dearer than five years ago, according to calculations by ING Bank.

Mr. Mraz said that, according to his institute’s polling, Fidesz still had a solid lead over Mr. Magyar’s Tisza party but was vulnerable on the economy.

Economic woes have also weakened Hungary’s hand in its long struggle with the European Union over sanctions on Russia — Mr. Orban wants them removed — and a host of other issues relating to the rule of law, democracy and corruption.

Short of cash to fill a big hole in its budget, Hungary has no real chance of getting financial aid from Mr. Trump, despite their close political ties, and increasingly needs money from the European Union, which has frozen more than $20 billion earmarked for it years ago.

In a blunt warning to Mr. Orban, who has infuriated European leaders by constantly vilifying them, the European Union’s executive arm on Dec. 31 took about 1 billion euros, or about $1.1 billion, of Hungary’s frozen money off the table, saying a time limit had expired.

On Friday, after weeks of attacks on the bloc by Mr. Orban as an “empire” of “warmongers” before which his country would never bow, Hungary quietly sheathed its veto power and agreed to allow the renewal of European sanctions imposed on more than 2,400 mostly Russian individuals and entities.

Mr. Orban’s jeremiads against Brussels, said Zoltan Pogatsa, an economics professor at the University of West Hungary, play well with his nationalist political base but “don’t help pay the bills.”

Before the European Union froze the bulk of its funding, he added, “money from Brussels drove most of the growth during what Mr. Orban calls the golden years,” a period of high growth and relatively stable prices during his first decade in power before the Covid pandemic.

After slipping into recession last year, Hungary’s economy is growing again, albeit at a very slow pace. But investment, a key driver of future growth, has plummeted, Mr. Pogatsa said. And the hole in the budget — a gap criticized by the European Union last month as an “excessive deficit situation” — is likely to balloon if, as he did before the last election in 2022, Mr. Orban offers handouts to voters before the one next year.

Mr. Orban last month announced what he described as the “biggest tax reduction program in Europe,” promising to exempt mothers with two or more children from income tax and give pensioners a rebate on the value-added tax they pay on foodstuffs.

At 27 percent, Hungary has the highest such tax in the European Union, and many economists say the easiest way to reduce food prices would be to reduce it, and also a special 4.5 percent tax on retailers.

But doing that would increase the budget deficit at a time when neither the European Union nor the United States is offering cash.

The ratings agency Standard & Poor said in November that it had downgraded its outlook for Hungary to negative, largely because it “may ultimately lose out on a substantial amount of the envisaged European Union funds.”

“No matter how much anti-E.U. rhetoric he uses, Orban realizes that he still has to squeeze some juice out of Brussels,” said Lajos Bokros, a former finance minister.

He said Mr. Orban viewed inflation and other problems entirely through a political lens. “His government created inflation with its loose spending,” he said, “but lies to voters that it was imported from outside” — by supermarket chains, most of which are foreign-owned, and by higher energy prices because of the war in Ukraine.

Sensing political danger ahead, Mr. Orban responded swiftly to the release of official data showing that Hungary’s year-on-year inflation rate had risen in February to 5.6 percent.

“We will put an end to excessive and unjustified price increases,” he said. He did not specify how this would be done, but Hungary’s state statistics office on Wednesday said that Mr. Orban’s intervention had already lowered egg prices by nearly 20 percent.

Geza Sebestyen, the head of the Center for Economic Policy at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a conservative government-affiliated university, said Mr. Orban was unlikely to send inspectors to punish shopkeepers who hadn’t lowered prices. “Socialism obviously doesn’t work,” he said, “and Eastern Europe knows that better than anyone.”

But Peter Bod, a former governor of Hungary’s central bank, fears Mr. Orban is reaching for communist-era tools in what is supposed to be a free market.

“Instead of goulash communism,” he said, referring to the country’s idiosyncratic reworking of Soviet-imposed socialism in the 1960s and ’70s, “we got goulash capitalism.”

Barnabas Heincz contributed reporting.

Ukraine attacked an airfield deep inside Russian territory overnight, officials said on Thursday, as the two sides traded strikes amid efforts by the Trump administration to hammer out details of a partial cease-fire.

The attack on the Russian airfield came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine spoke to President Trump and accepted the Kremlin’s offer to mutually pause attacks on energy targets for 30 days as a step toward a broader cease-fire. On Thursday, Russia and Ukraine said that they would hold meetings with U.S. officials — separately — in Saudi Arabia early next week.

Russia’s defense ministry said that it had shot down 54 Ukrainian drones in the Saratov region overnight. The region is home to the Engels airfield, which hosts some of Russia’s long-range, nuclear-capable bombers. While the ministry did not say how many drones had evaded air defenses, The New York Times confirmed that at least one strike targeted the airfield in Engels shortly after sunrise on Thursday.

Videos and photographs shared by witnesses on social media and verified by The Times showed an explosion and a large plume of dark smoke rising from the base, and loud secondary explosions after the strike. The strike appeared to target a part of the airfield with several warehouses, which is described online as a weapons storage area.

The governor of the Saratov region, Roman Busargin, said on Thursday that civilians living near the airfield were being evacuated “for safety reasons” because of a fire on the base. About 30 houses were damaged overnight, he added in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Ukraine’s military confirmed in a statement that it had attacked the airfield. Kyiv has previously targeted the base, which it calls a staging ground for Russia’s long-running attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Russian forces also carried out further strikes on Ukraine overnight. Ukraine’s air force said on Thursday that Russia had launched 171 drones, 63 of which were shot down by air defenses. At least five people were killed and 26 injured across the country, according to local authorities.

The large-scale drone attack hit the port city of Odesa particularly hard. Early reports indicated that three people were injured, including a child. Civilian infrastructure was also damaged, “including a residential high-rise building, a shopping center and shops,” Oleh Kiper, the head of the regional military administration, posted on Telegram. Local Telegram channels showed multiple photos and videos of fires in different parts of the city.

While both Russia and Ukraine have agreed to temporarily stop targeting each other’s energy infrastructure, how and when that pause will go into effect remains unclear. Those details were expected to be discussed at the talks in Saudi Arabia — and Mr. Zelensky said on Wednesday night that “everything will continue to fly” until “there is an appropriate document” negotiating terms.

On Thursday, the Kremlin said that Russian and U.S. officials were hammering out the details for a new round of bilateral talks. Those talks will be held on Monday in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, President Vladimir V. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told Russian news agencies.

Ukraine will also send a “technical team” of representatives to Saudi Arabia for meetings with U.S. officials on Monday, Mr. Zelensky told a news conference in Oslo. His understanding, Mr. Zelensky added, was that Russian officials would have a separate or parallel meeting with U.S. officials.

Mr. Zelensky has characterized some of the Kremlin’s proposals as stalling tactics to maneuver for military advantage and a better deal from Mr. Trump. On Thursday morning, he suggested the same in noting that Russian attacks had not stopped.

“Every day and every night up to a hundred drones and missile attacks also do not stop,” he wrote on Telegram. “With every such strike Russia shows the world its real attitude to peace.”

Reporting was contributed by Nataliia Novosolova, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Malachy Browne and Henrik Pryser Libell.

A hard-line Hindu group’s call for the removal of the tomb of a 17th-century Mughal ruler has ignited tensions with Muslims in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, leading to communal violence and the imposition of a curfew.

The violence, which occurred this week in the city of Nagpur, centered around the tomb of Aurangzeb, a Muslim emperor of India whom Hindu nationalists have vilified as a tyrant who brutalized Hindus.

The clashes were contained by midweek, and the demand that the tomb be demolished has gone unheeded. But the flare-up showed how right-wing Hindus have seized on a long-ago history of Muslim rule of India to stoke grievances today against the country’s 200 million Muslims.

The trouble started on Monday, which, according to the Hindu calendar, is the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji, a valorized Hindu king who fought Aurangzeb. The Nagpur unit of a right-wing Hindu organization, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad or V.H.P., called for Aurangzeb’s tomb to be removed from the state, which had been the seat of Shivaji’s empire.

The grave is nearly 300 miles from Nagpur, in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district. Once known as Aurangabad, a name derived from the Mughal emperor’s name, the district was renamed after Shivaji’s son in 2023.

Officials from the European Union said on Thursday that they would delay their retaliation against President Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs — including 50 percent levies on American whiskey and other goods — until the middle of next month.

The move is meant to give officials time to refine the list of products that will be hit while also allowing more time to strike a deal with the United States, said Olof Gill, a spokesman. The first wave of E.U. tariffs was originally set to kick in on March 31, with a second wave coming a few weeks later.

The postponement could allow officials to reconsider whether they want to impose such big tariffs on sensitive products like bourbon. And it comes as Europe tries to prevent its trading relationship with the United States — arguably the globe’s most important — from devolving into a tit-for-tat trade war that costs consumers and companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The E.U. and the U.S. enjoy the largest bilateral trade and investment relationship in the world,” Maros Sefcovic, the bloc’s trade commissioner, said during a speech in Brussels on Thursday. “It should be a priority for both sides to protect and further develop this relationship.”

Mr. Sefcovic, who is in charge of negotiating trade matters for the E.U., talked to his American counterparts by phone last week. He said on Thursday that he had learned that the Trump administration did not want to negotiate on trade until after April 2, when the United States is expected to announce a new and even more sweeping round of tariffs on its global trading partners.

“For them, this should serve as a base line for redefining and rebuilding U.S. trading relations with the rest of the world,” Mr. Sefcovic said. “Only then may partners be able to engage on possible negotiations.”

The delay in negotiation has complicated the original start date for Europe’s retaliatory tariffs, which E.U. policymakers had always hoped would be a tool to prod the Americans to the negotiating table.

The E.U. announced its tariff package last week in response to steel and aluminum tariffs that began on March 12. The European plan was originally meant to take effect over two phases.

The first — the one that is now delayed — would have allowed a set of tariffs that had been instituted during Mr. Trump’s first presidency and then suspended during the Biden administration to snap back into place at higher levels. Whiskey, motorcycles and a range of other products would have been affected.

The second phase would have placed new tariffs on a wide array of American products. Member states were meant to consult on the proposed list, set out in a 99-page document covering everything from lingerie to soy products to machinery parts. Those tariffs were set to begin in mid-April.

Now, all of the tariffs are expected to take hold next month, adding heftier levies on up to 26 billion euros, about $28 billion, worth of exports.

Slowing down the process could allow officials more time to take feedback into account and make edits, relevant at a moment when the continent’s plan has already met with a prompt and painful response from Washington.

Mr. Trump said he would impose a crushing 200 percent tariff on European champagne, wine and other alcohol to retaliate against Europe’s plan to hit American whiskey in particular.

That threat has stoked alarm among European leaders from wine-producing nations. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, has warned against a “vicious circle” of trade measures, and François Bayrou, the prime minister of France, has said Europe is at risk of “hitting the wrong targets.”

Whiskey was originally placed on the tariff list during Mr. Trump’s first trade war, in 2018, as a way to target Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, who was then the majority leader. Bourbon is an important export from his home state. But with a new crop of leaders in Congress and surrounding Mr. Trump, the political calculus around such products has shifted.

Hanging over everything is what more might happen before mid-April.

While details on the new tariffs that the United States might impose on April 2 remain scant, Europe has been bracing for their impact. Mr. Trump has at times threatened that levies on cars and other products could be as high as 25 percent — a painful blow to German automakers, for instance.

Mr. Sefcovic said on Thursday that the United States could also unleash further trade measures on copper, wood and shipbuilders.

Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, suggested on Thursday that tariffs were being used as “blackmail,” and that they could both sharply reduce European growth and add uncertainty to the outlook for price inflation.

But she said that if the E.U. responded by striking closer trade deals both internally and with other trading partners, it could offset those potential consequences.

“The answer to the current shift in U.S. trade policies should be more, not less, trade integration, both with trade partners around the globe and within the E.U.,” Ms. Lagarde said.