For eight decades, Henri Mignon has viewed Americans as heroes. They twice liberated his tiny Belgian hometown, Houffalize, from German occupation — the second time, he said, when he was 8 years old, mere hours after shrapnel from shelling had killed his father.

The image of U.S. troops handing out gum to local children is a memory he has carried with him ever since. And he has dedicated more than 30 years to retelling the story of the war as a guide to tourists who flock to this corner of the Belgium-Luxembourg border, eager to learn about the last major German offensive on the Western Front.

But this month Mr. Mignon, 88, said he felt uncomfortable as he anticipated his Saturday morning Battle of the Bulge tour in Bastogne, just south of Houffalize.

It was not long after the disastrous meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump in the Oval Office, and it came as Mr. Trump was presenting a conciliatory tone toward Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s leader.

Usually Mr. Mignon portrays Americans as heroes and talks about the strong bonds between this part of the world and the United States. This time, he said, he didn’t know exactly what to think about the relationship.

“I feel it is changing,” he admitted in the days leading up to the tour.

Mr. Mignon has taken issue with American foreign policy before — during the Vietnam War, at times over the Middle East. Yet current events had pushed him and his fellow guides to a new level of distress, he said. Like many Europeans, they had felt their long-held admiration for the United States shudder.

Some guides, he said, had considered halting tours for American groups altogether. Mr. Mignon never contemplated that, but he did fret over exactly what he would say as he shuttled students and teachers from North Carolina around Bastogne. Would he again emphasize the closeness of the relationship between Europeans and Americans? How would he do that when modern America, from his vantage in Belgium, was looking far less heroic?

The sun was high and the March sky a gleaming blue as Mr. Mignon, sprightly, white-haired and wearing a Yankees cap, waited for the students to gather in Bastogne’s town square. The flags of Belgium, the European Union and the United States flapped gently behind him as they arrived, toting bags of Belgian chocolate.

Mr. Mignon began with a joke about his name, which means “little and cute” in French. He then launched into his tour, explaining how the Germans had occupied Bastogne for much of the war. It was liberated by the Americans in September 1944. But then, that December, German forces recaptured the town, which was again freed by Americans during the Battle of the Bulge.

The book and television show “Band of Brothers” center in part on the events in Bastogne, and once the students had boarded their tour bus, Mr. Mignon had the driver whisk them past real-life locations related to scenes from the show. He told them the true stories of Easy Company, the unit on which the book and series focuses.

He explained to the students that Bastogne remains a very “American town,” one where the bell tower plays the opening notes of “The Star Spangled Banner” every hour.

After the students had filed off the bus and into an underground crypt dedicated to the war dead — below a memorial bearing the names of American states — Mr. Mignon described to them “his war.”

He recalled the day he was abruptly dismissal from school with a promise that he would be allowed to come back soon. It would be more than a year.

He described the Germans boarders who filled his house from basement to attic, growing progressively less kind as the war dragged on. He told how, on the final day of the second occupation, American soldiers had whisked him away in a Jeep from his burning house, ignited in the crossfire when they retook the town.

Mr. Mignon said that his family had “lost everything,” in the war, and that Americans had helped set them back on their feet.

After the war, Mr. Mignon finished school, studied military history in Brussels, and ultimately became an officer in the Belgian Army before retiring to this tiny town in Francophone Belgium, where he became a guide.

During the tour, Mr. Mignon spoke in the practiced manner of someone who has recited a grim story hundreds of times, maybe thousands. He did not offer any commentary on Mr. Trump or about how starkly America’s military involvement in Europe 80 years ago contrasts with the stance it is increasingly taking. He said he had decided that the tour was about celebrating the veterans of the past, not the United States of the present.

The Americans themselves avoided talking about politics during their trip, which had started in France and would continue on to Germany. “My responsibility as a government teacher is to teach how the government works and is supposed to work,” Laura Krizan, a teacher leading the trip, explained. “I’d rather them graduate and not know how I vote.”

And the Europeans they had encountered had been “shy” about broaching current events, said Thomas Boyreau-Suzémont, who had helped organize and shepherd the tour through various World War II sites across Europe — even if politics is perpetually top of mind these days.

“We never thought that this alliance would be in danger,” Mr. Boyreau-Suzémont said, of the European-U.S. connection. “People are shocked,” he added.

Mr. Mignon’s matter-of-factness slipped at the final stop of the tour, a tranquil pine forest that conceals foxholes once used by the Easy Company.

There, he used his cane to point out the divots in the earth that American soldiers dug to shelter themselves from shells and ammunition as they spent freezing winter days and nights attempting to defend Bastogne and push back German forces. He explained that the trees overhead were new growth, that they had not been present to “witness” the fighting that once transpired here.

The students, who had been listening politely, turned rapt as he told the stories in his heavily-accented English; the foxholes seemed to resonate with them more than the rest of the tour. And when Mr. Boyreau-Suzémont suggested it was time to leave, Mr. Mignon objected vociferously. The group had yet to see the most important and best-preserved foxholes.

“Je cours,” he insisted. I’ll run.

The group ended up touring those foxholes.

But as someone so deeply invested in the past, Mr. Mignon could not completely dispel of the present. On the bus ride back, with just minutes left, his resolve to not talk about modern events slipped.

He was describing May 8, when Bastogne celebrates Victory in Europe Day, with ceremonies held in honor of its American saviors. The day falls on May 9 in Russia, because of the time zone difference. He mused about what it would be like this year.

“Maybe your president will be present in Moscow then,” he quipped, to utter silence on the bus. “With his friends Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong.”

President Trump says he is focused on stopping the “death march” in Ukraine “as soon as possible.”

But for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, cease-fire talks with Mr. Trump are a means to much broader ends.

Russian and American officials met in Saudi Arabia on Monday to deepen their negotiations about technical details of a partial cease-fire to halt attacks on energy facilities and on ships in the Black Sea. While Ukraine says it’s ready for a full truce, Mr. Putin has made it clear that he will seek a wide range of concessions first.

The upshot: The Kremlin appears determined to squeeze as many benefits as possible from Mr. Trump’s desire for a Ukraine peace deal, even as it slow-walks the negotiations. Viewed from Moscow, better ties with Washington are an economic and geopolitical boon — one that may be achieved even as Russian missiles continue pounding Ukraine.

Interviews last week with senior Russian foreign-policy figures at a security conference in New Delhi suggested that the Kremlin saw negotiations over Ukraine and over U.S.-Russia ties as running on two separate tracks. Mr. Putin continues to seek a far-reaching victory in Ukraine but is humoring Mr. Trump’s cease-fire push to seize the benefits of a thaw with Washington.

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin were developing a “bilateral agenda” that was “not connected to Ukraine.”

“Ukraine is running its course,” Mr. Nikonov said in an interview on the sidelines of the New Delhi conference, called the Raisina Dialogue. “The offensive is ongoing,” Mr. Nikonov added. “But I think that for Putin, relations with America are more important than the question of Ukraine specifically.”

Engaging with Mr. Trump, Moscow’s thinking seems to go, could unlock economic benefits as basic as spare parts for Russia’s Boeing jets and geopolitical gains as broad as a reduction in NATO’s presence in Europe. What’s less clear is whether Mr. Trump will use those hopes as leverage to get a better deal for Ukraine, and whether he will at some point lose patience with Mr. Putin.

“Mr. Trump likes quick deals,” said Aleksandr A. Dynkin, an international affairs specialist who advises the Russian Foreign Ministry. “If he sees that there are big difficulties, he may be disappointed and cast this problem aside.”

As a result, Mr. Putin seems to be pulling out all the stops to hold Mr. Trump’s interest.

Meeting in Moscow with the White House envoy Steve Witkoff this month, Mr. Putin handed over a “beautiful portrait of President Trump” commissioned from a Russian artist, Mr. Witkoff said in an interview released on Saturday.

“It was such a gracious moment,” Mr. Witkoff told the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

On Ukraine, Mr. Putin has shown no sign of budging from his far-reaching goals — a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, a rollback of the Western alliance in Central and Eastern Europe, limits on Ukraine’s military, and some level of influence over Ukraine’s domestic politics.

Feodor Voitolovsky, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said that Russia would seek a “road map” to a broader deal before agreeing to any cease-fire.

He also said that Russia could accept a United Nations peacekeeping force in Ukraine as long as it did not include troops from NATO countries.

“For Russia, the long-term perspective is more valuable than a tactical cease-fire,” said Mr. Voitolovsky, who serves on advisory boards at the Russian Foreign Ministry and Security Council. “We can emerge with a model that will allow Russia and the United States, and Russia and NATO, to coexist without interfering in each other’s spheres of interests,” he added.

To achieve such a deal, Russia is appealing to Mr. Trump’s business-minded focus. Mr. Voitolovsky contended that broad agreement over Ukraine was a prerequisite for U.S.-Russian cooperation, and that Mr. Trump, “as a businessman,” understood that Russian assets were currently undervalued.

Mr. Dynkin, the Russian international affairs specialist, said that the Kremlin could remove the United States from its list of “unfriendly countries” — a classification that restricts American companies’ ability to do business in Russia.

He said that Moscow was particularly interested in negotiations over the aviation sector, given the challenges that Russian airlines face in servicing their American-made jets. The United States could allow the export of airplane spare parts and reinstate direct flights to Moscow, he said; Russia could let American airlines fly over Siberia, a right that Russia withdrew in 2022.

Anastasia Likhacheva, dean of international affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, said it was unlikely that Mr. Trump would deliver quick and far-reaching sanctions relief.

But she said a thaw in relations with the United States could lead to reduced enforcement of sanctions and make it easier for Russian companies to operate globally by sending a signal that Russia was no longer a problematic partner.

“Such a detox,” she said, “could be useful and will expand our menu of possibilities.”

On his first day in office, Lebanon’s new finance minister, Yassine Jaber, sat at his desk reading a color-coded report on the dire state of the ministry’s operations. Nearly everything was marked in alarming red.

The computers were decades old — some still ran on Windows 98. Like much of the government, the ministry relied on mountains of paper records, allowing dysfunction and corruption to fester.

“Things cannot continue as they are,” he sighed.

To fix how it’s run, Lebanon needs money. But to attract money, it needs to fix how it’s run: For years, it has failed to enact sweeping financial and governance overhauls required to unlock billions in international financial assistance that it has needed to address a debilitating economic crisis.

Now, that support is even more critical after the devastating 14-month war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that has long held political sway in this tiny Mediterranean country. A fragile truce is holding, but large parts of Lebanon are in ruins. Hezbollah has been left battered and cannot pay for reconstruction. Lebanon’s new government is able to afford “frankly none” of the bill, Mr. Jaber said.

Foreign donors hold the key to Lebanon’s recovery, but to meet their demands, the state must do what it has never done before: Undertake painful economic and structural changes, while confronting the thorny issue of Hezbollah’s arms.

“The foreign aid is not just charity,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “They are not going to give billions and billions of dollars unless their position is respected.”

The total damage and economic loss from the war is estimated to be $14 billion, and Lebanon needs $11 billion to rebuild, the World Bank said this month, making the conflict the country’s most destructive since its long civil war ended in 1990.

“It’s very important to move fast on reconstruction; people are sleeping in tents. You have a whole part of Lebanon paralyzed,” said Mr. Jaber on that day in his office last month. “Everything today is a priority.”

The devastation has compounded the country’s economic woes, which began in 2019 when its financial system collapsed under the burden of state debt. That triggered a sovereign default and prompted banks to impose informal capital controls, leaving many Lebanese people with their life savings frozen.

Lebanon reached a draft funding deal with the International Monetary Fund in 2022 that was billed as a lifeline for the country, but it was conditioned on changes, including addressing the country’s weak governance and restructuring its financial sector. The government failed to deliver, hindered by deadlock and vested interests of the country’s political elite.

“Lebanon has to start by helping itself,” Mr. Jaber said. “How do you do that? By starting to show real action.”

Mr. Jaber spoke with The New York Times the day after Lebanon’s new government received a vote of confidence that has sidelined Hezbollah politically. Mr. Jaber, now one of the country’s most powerful figures, holds the reins to public spending and is responsible for reconstruction efforts and securing foreign aid.

Hezbollah’s patron, Iran, contributed heavily to reconstruction after their the group’s last major conflict with Israel in 2006, but is now largely unwilling because of its own crises, analysts said. The group has been further isolated by the collapse of another ally, the Assad regime in neighboring Syria.

As a result, Hezbollah — so powerful before the war that it was widely considered a state within a state — cannot finance reconstruction, Mr. Jaber said.

“It’s a different era,” he said.

Lebanon has so far secured a pledge of $250 million in reconstruction aid from the World Bank, said Mr. Jaber, an initial loan that is part of a broader $1 billion fund to be provided by donor countries, but amounting to only 2 percent of what the World Bank says the country needs.

Some experts question how quickly the government can make systemic changes. President Joseph Aoun has said that he hopes the foreign aid can come “step by step” as new policies are implemented.

Adding to the uncertainty, international assistance may depend on more than just a financial overhaul. Under the terms of the truce deal that ended the war in November, Hezbollah must also disarm — a task that could risk violence between Hezbollah’s largely Shiite supporters and domestic opponents. Experts said that the United States and Gulf Arab countries consider disarmament a prerequisite for large-scale assistance.

The Lebanese government has promised to bring all weapons under the state’s control, but it remains unclear how exactly it will achieve that, and if so, when. Mr. Jaber did not comment on disarming Hezbollah, but noted that the group was an established political party with popular support and that its political role was not a point of contention.

Hezbollah remains a potent military force, and some Lebanese officials have ruled out forcibly disarming it, hinting at a negotiated settlement. Earlier this month, the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, implicitly rejected the idea that the “resistance” would lay down its weapons.

The government is “being bombarded by both demands: painful economic and financial reforms, and strangling Hezbollah’s finances and presence,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. But, without funding first, “you are pushing a government and a president, with no juice, to meet the most challenging goals.”

Hezbollah officials have insisted that reconstruction must not be linked to overhaul demands, fearing a loss of support if the rebuilding process is drawn out, experts said. Nearly 100,000 people are displaced in Lebanon, according to the United Nations, the vast majority of them from Hezbollah’s heartlands in the south.

“Reform will take a hell of a long time,” Mr. Hage Ali said.

Seeking to reassure Hezbollah’s supporters, Mr. Qassem, the group’s leader, has promised compensation for each affected household of between $12,000 and $14,000, intended to cover rent costs and replace furniture. But the process has been marred by delays.

With Hezbollah largely sidelined, a flurry of diplomatic efforts are underway to reassure foreign donors. Lebanese officials met this month with an I.M.F. delegation in Beirut, which Mr. Jaber said aimed to restart negotiations over the organization’s long-awaited rescue package. A top European Union official said last month that Brussels would monitor the talks to assess whether Europe could offer its own financial aid.

An immediate priority, Mr. Jaber said, is appointing a central bank governor who can set about reviving the country’s banking sector. Lebanon has failed to name a successor since Riad Salameh stepped down from the role in 2023, facing accusations that he ran the world’s largest Ponzi scheme for overseeing a strategy that required ever more borrowing to pay creditors.

Lebanon’s new leaders have also promised an external audit of all public institutions, part of a broader pledge to crack down on the corruption that has long plagued the country.

Mr. Jaber said he was hopeful but acknowledged the uncertainty ahead.

“Where there is a will, there is a way,” he said. The government faces a test “on the issue of their will.”

Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.