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 dismissed from school with a promise that he would be allowed to come back soon. It would be more than a year.

He described the German 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.”

Russian officials held a round of talks with representatives of the United States on Monday in Saudi Arabia, following a similar meeting a day earlier between American and Ukrainian delegations.

The talks are aimed at ironing out details of a possible limited cease-fire, in what could be a crucial step toward a full cessation of hostilities in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Russian state news agencies said that the meeting between the U.S. and Russian delegations lasted more than 12 hours. The two sides are expected to publish a joint statement on Tuesday, the news agencies reported.

What’s on the agenda

The meetings in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, were expected to focus the details of a tentative agreement between Russia and Ukraine to temporarily halt strikes on energy infrastructure.

Last week, the countries traded accusations of attacks against each other’s energy infrastructure, highlighting the lack of trust between the two countries and how tenuous any deal could be.

Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said his delegation’s talks on Sunday had lasted about five hours. “The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy,” he wrote on social media, without offering details.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said on Monday that the Russian delegation also would discuss shipping in the Black Sea and the restoration of a grain deal agreed to in 2022 that allowed millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to be exported. Russia withdrew from the agreement in 2023, saying that Western sanctions were severely limiting its own ability to export agricultural products.

President Volodymyr Zelensky had said that Ukraine would prepare a list of infrastructure that could be included in the cease-fire agreement. He added that a third party would have to monitor the cease-fire and suggested that the United States could do so.

Serhii Leshchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian president’s office, said that the delegation from Kyiv would hold additional discussions with U.S. officials on Monday, after the Moscow-Washington talks. But he cautioned against expecting an imminent agreement, telling Ukrainian news media that “negotiations are usually not concluded in a single day; they sometimes take months.”

Steven Witkoff, whom President Trump has tapped to be his personal envoy to Mr. Putin, has said that the ultimate goal of the talks is a 30-day full cease-fire that would allow time for negotiations on a permanent truce.

But the path toward such a truce has been shaky. Moscow continues to insist on maximalist positions, including about asserting territorial control and ensuring Ukraine never joins NATO. The Ukrainian government has repeatedly said that it will not concede to the Kremlin’s demands and has accused Mr. Putin of stalling for time.

While Russia and Ukraine may find common ground in talks about energy and shipping, both have laid out conditions for a complete cessation of hostilities that appear irreconcilable — a sign of the steep challenges ahead in any broader peace negotiations.

Unlike previous cease-fire discussions, which involved top government officials from all sides, this new round will focus on technical matters and will mostly involve diplomats and government advisers.

Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, said the American delegation would include some of his own staff members, along with Michael Anton, policy planning director at the State Department, and aides to the national security adviser, Michael Waltz.

The Russian delegation

The Russian negotiators are led by Grigory B. Karasin, a senior Russian diplomat and lawmaker, and Sergey O. Beseda, an adviser to the head of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., the country’s domestic intelligence agency.

Mr. Karasin described the talks as “creative,” the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

“It is important to stay in touch and understand each other’s point of view,” Mr. Karasin added. “We manage to do that.”

While Mr. Karasin has been involved in sensitive foreign policy talks before, Mr. Beseda’s choice came as a surprise to some.

Mr. Beseda was head of the F.S.B. department responsible for international intelligence operations. He has been described by Russian news outlets as one of the main sources of intelligence that convinced Mr. Putin in 2022 that there was pro-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and that a brisk invasion could easily dismantle the government in Kyiv.

In 2023, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, called Mr. Beseda a “very problematic person” for Ukraine who “has done a lot of evil.”

The Ukrainian delegation

Mr. Umerov is leading the Ukrainian delegation in Riyadh, along with Pavlo Palisa, a top military adviser to Mr. Zelensky.

Both Mr. Umerov and Mr. Palisa are members of the Ukrainian delegation for peace talks that Mr. Zelensky appointed this month, a group led by his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. Mr. Umerov was a key negotiator for Ukraine in peace talks with Russian diplomats in the early months of the war.

Given the technical nature of the talks on energy and shipping, Ukraine also sent seasoned diplomats and civil servants as part of its delegation. Ukrinform, the state news agency, said the team included deputy foreign and energy ministers, along with Mr. Zelensky’s top diplomatic adviser.

Moscow’s position

Last week, Mr. Putin told Mr. Trump in a telephone conversation that Russia would agree to a temporary truce only if Ukraine stopped mobilizing soldiers, training troops or importing weapons for the duration of any pause in fighting.

Mr. Putin also demanded the complete halt of foreign military aid and intelligence to Kyiv, calling it “the key condition for preventing an escalation of the conflict and making progress toward its resolution through political and diplomatic means,” according to the Kremlin’s readout of the call.

The White House said that military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine would continue despite the Kremlin’s demands. But the Trump administration has been less clear on Moscow’s calls for territorial concessions and at times even appeared to align with the Kremlin’s stance.

Mr. Witkoff echoed a Kremlin talking point on Sunday when he tried to legitimize the staged referendums that the Russian occupation forces held in parts of Ukraine to justify the annexation of those territories taken by military force. “There is a view within the country of Russia that these are Russian territories,” Mr. Witkoff told Fox News. “There are referendums within these territories that justify these actions.” Those referendums were widely denounced as fraudulent and illegal by the international community.

Fundamentally, Russia’s position regarding the conflict has remained the same. The Kremlin says it wants to “eliminate the root causes of the crisis” — essentially demanding that Ukraine capitulate.

Kyiv’s position

Ukraine had previously agreed to an unconditional 30-day truce to cease all combat operations, at the urging of the Trump administration. But after Moscow said that it would support only a partial cease-fire on energy infrastructure, Mr. Zelensky spoke with Mr. Trump and agreed to the limited truce.

In recent days, Ukrainian officials have set out red lines going into negotiations: Kyiv will never accept Russian sovereignty over occupied Ukrainian territory; it will not agree to be blocked from joining NATO or to reduce the size of its army; and it must have security guarantees as part of any peace settlement.

Many Ukrainian officials and analysts have expressed doubt that even a limited cease-fire would hold for long, noting that previous truces between Moscow and Kyiv were routinely violated, with each side blaming the other.

“I do not believe in a cease-fire. We’ve been through this before,” Kostyantyn Yeliseev, a veteran diplomat and former Ukrainian deputy foreign minister who took part in cease-fire negotiations in 2014 and 2015, said in an interview.

What’s next?

Mr. Witkoff said on Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg News that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin were “likely” to meet in Saudi Arabia within weeks. American officials will also probably continue talks with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts in the Middle East to discuss details of a limited truce.

But the foundations of the diplomatic process have been wobbly, analysts said, with Moscow and Kyiv ready to continue fighting.

“Both sides still believe that they can continue the war regardless of the American position,” said Dmitry Kuznets, a military analyst with the Russian news outlet Meduza, which operates from Latvia after being outlawed by the Kremlin.

He added, “Moscow’s and Kyiv’s visions of what an agreement could look like are still infinitely far from each other.”

Maria Varenikova and Minho Kim contributed reporting.

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.

Journalists from Radio Martí, the U.S. federally-funded news outlet aimed at communist Cuba, were in the middle of interviewing a Cuban activist in Miami on a recent Saturday when bleak looks suddenly came over their faces.

The 40-year-old news agency, designed to send uncensored news in Spanish into Cuba, had just been ordered closed by the Trump administration, the crew learned in an email. The profile of the activist — Ramón Saúl Sánchez, known for leading protest flotillas to Cuba — was scrapped.

“They were very confused,” Mr. Sánchez said. “They said, ‘We think we’ve been terminated. We need to leave.’”

President Trump did in a flash what the Castro brothers in Cuba couldn’t do in four decades: he took a news station that had long drawn the communist regime’s fury off the air.

Radio Martí became the latest in dozens of programs and agencies in the U.S. government to fall to the massive cost-cutting carried out by Mr. Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk.

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Turkey has been plunged into a political crisis after the authorities arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and the top rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on accusations of corruption and supporting terrorism.

The biggest protests in more than a decade have erupted across the country, with Mr. Imamoglu ousted from his position and jailed hours before Turkey’s main opposition party designated him its candidate in the next presidential election.

Mr. Imamoglu has denied the charges, calling them politically motivated. Many people have accused the government of using the courts to sideline a perceived political threat to Mr. Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003, and have called for his release.

Who is Ekrem Imamoglu?

Mr. Imamoglu became the mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic engine, in 2019, after defeating a candidate backed by Mr. Erdogan. He was re-elected twice, and some polls suggest that he could beat Mr. Erdogan in a head-to-head race for the presidency.

On March 19, scores of police officers arrested Mr. Imamoglu at his home after state prosecutors accused him of corruption in municipal business and supporting terrorism. Four days later, the government removed him from office and jailed him pending trial on the corruption charges.

That same day, Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, or C.H.P., held a primary to choose Mr. Imamoglu as its candidate in the next presidential election. Millions of party members from across the country voted, and nonparty members cast symbolic ballots to voice their support for him.

Mr. Imamoglu has vowed to fight the government. But his detention is not the only hurdle he faces in seeking the presidency. The day before his arrest, his university annulled his diploma, which could preclude him from a presidential bid. He faces an array of other court cases, too, including some that could see him temporarily barred from politics. He has called them politically motivated, too, and is contesting them in court.

What is the government saying?

State prosecutors accused Mr. Imamoglu of leading a criminal organization and overseeing bribery, bid rigging and other financial misdeeds at City Hall. They also accused him of supporting terrorism through his political coordination with a pro-Kurdish group during last year’s municipal elections, a claim that is still under investigation.

Government officials say that the accusations are not politically motivated and have called on Turks to have faith in the courts and wait for the legal process to conclude. The government has also issued protest bans in major cities, limited access to social media sites and flooded pro-government news channels with leaks aimed at indicating Mr. Imamoglu’s guilt.

Security forces have used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the protests. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has said that more than 1,100 people have been detained in relation to the protests following Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest and that more than 100 police officers were injured in clashes with demonstrators.

“Some circles in recent days are abusing the right to demonstrate, attempting to disrupt public order and attack our police officers as they fan street events,” Mr. Yerlikaya said in a post on X. “Such actions aim to disrupt the peace and safety of our people.”

What could this mean for Turkey’s future?

The moves against Mr. Imamoglu are the latest examples of what Mr. Erdogan’s critics call his increasingly authoritarian tactics. In his more than two decades in power, Mr. Erdogan has gathered state power in his hands while extending his influence over the news media and the judiciary.

Mr. Erdogan’s second term expires in 2028. The Constitution limits presidents to two full terms, but he could legally run again if Parliament called for early elections and cut short his second mandate.

If Mr. Imamoglu, 54, can escape his legal troubles, that would put him in a head-to-head race with Mr. Erdogan, 71. The president has not said whether he will run, but he has no clear successor and many people expect him to do so.

Turkey’s stock market and the value of its currency have dropped substantially since Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest, although they have since regained some of their losses. Some investors, however, could avoid the country out of fears about the rule-of-law and the possibility of more instability.

Some European leaders have criticized Mr. Imamoglu’s arrest as anti-democratic, but senior American officials have said little about it.

Recent global events may have left Mr. Erdogan in a good position. The Trump administration has expressed few concerns for how American partners govern their countries. And fear that the United States will withdraw support for Ukraine in its war with Russia has led European countries to seek greater defense ties with Turkey that they may not want to risk jeopardizing.

Safak Timur contributed reporting.

As the Israeli military has expanded its offensive in the Gaza Strip, taking control of more territory in parts of the south and north and issuing new evacuation orders, many people who had only recently returned to their homes have been forcibly displaced once again.

Israel’s drive into the southern city of Rafah pushed thousands of families from the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, near the border with Egypt, to flee on foot on Sunday before Israeli troops completely encircled the area by the afternoon.

For many, the new round of mass displacement brought back painful memories of the earlier days of the war in Gaza. Residents of Tal al-Sultan and nearby areas said they had to walk on a specific route amid bombardment, carrying very few belongings, during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast during daytime.

Most of those who fled on Sunday walked several miles north to the city of Khan Younis, where they were left without shelter because of a severe shortage of basic necessities and tents, the Rafah local government, which includes Tal al-Sultan, said in a statement.

The Israeli military renewed its offensive in Gaza last week after an impasse in talks to extend a fragile, temporary cease-fire with Hamas that went into effect in mid-January. That truce was intended to be the first of three phases leading to the end of a war that began with the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, but the second phase has been delayed indefinitely.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday that 61 people were killed in Israeli bombardments over the past day, a day after it said the death toll in the enclave had surpassed 50,000 since the war began almost 18 months ago. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Sunday that its troops had killed several fighters in Tal al-Sultan and raided a site it said was used as a Hamas command and control center. It did not provide evidence of its claims, which could not be independently verified.

On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that Hussam Shabat, a journalist who contributed to its coverage of the war, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his car in northern Gaza. At least 208 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Gaza government press office. The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

Videos circulating online and verified by The New York Times show the apparently lifeless bodies of Mr. Shabat and two other men, as well as a donkey that had been pulling a cart, on a dusty road in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. Next to them is a car pocked with what appear to be bullet or shrapnel holes, with an Al Jazeera emblem and the letters “TV” on the windshield. A man shouts Mr. Shabat’s name and shakes his body, trying to get a response, while others carry away a person whose condition is unclear.

The Palestinian civil defense in Gaza said on Sunday that Israel’s siege of Tal al-Sultan had endangered the lives of nearly 50,000 people living there, with some either unable or unwilling to flee. Some residents, after months of repeated displacement, had only recently been able to return to their homes, or what was left of them, during the short-lived cease-fire.

“We left with the clothes on our backs under fire and bombardment,” said Mustafa Jabr, 36, after walking for nearly six hours along a sandy route with his family from their home in Tal al-Sultan on Sunday morning. “It was a very surprising and intense attack,” he said from a friend’s house in southern Khan Younis, where the family was now sheltering.

Mr. Jabr said that before encircling the neighborhood, Israeli vehicles had been regularly patrolling the area around the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of Gaza along the border with Egypt and one of the main sticking points in the cease-fire talks. But at dawn on Sunday, residents were jolted up by “sudden bombardment,” before fliers ordering people to evacuate along a specified route began raining down, he said.

“So we headed north under a hail of tank shelling and quadcopter fire that wounded dozens,” said Mr. Jabr. “Many old people were abandoned along the route because they were too weak to keep walking on the sand,” he said, adding, “The scenes I saw on the way were horrific, there were so many children and old people and disabled people.”

Mr. Jabr’s family was now among an increasing number of families in Gaza who were once again wondering when they would be able to return to their homes.

Ahmad and Faten al-Sayyed also fled on Sunday, walking with their four children to a relative’s tent in western Khan Younis. They had recently returned to their damaged home in Rafah after nine months of sheltering in a tent in Khan Younis, only to find themselves back in another tent less than a month later.

“I thought the second phase of negotiations would begin while we were back in our home in Rafah,” said Mr. al-Sayyed.

Although occasional gunfire was heard in Rafah in recent days, Mr. al-Sayyed said that he was shocked when Israeli troops advanced into the area. “We never imagined it would escalate into a full siege and military operation,” he said.

As soon as the evacuation orders were issued, Mr. al-Sayyed told his children to pack two outfits each in their school bags.

Some on the route were carrying terrified, crying children, while others clutched whatever belongings they could. Most of the adults, observing Ramadan, neither ate nor drank anything along the way.

The elderly and ill, some in wheelchairs, struggled to keep up as drones “followed us, hovering above, moving right and left, watching every step,” said Mr. al-Sayyed.

The crowd found itself trapped for nearly an hour and a half after Israeli forces blocked the road, while people pleaded with the Red Cross to get them to safety.

“We could hear bulldozers and occasional gunfire,” Mr. al-Sayyed recalled. “Later, I saw how they had cleared paths for people to pass through, built mounds of sand around the area, set up fences and cameras, and positioned soldiers on top of those sand barriers,” he added, referring to Israeli troops.

They were then instructed to continue walking toward a United Nations warehouse, where an Israeli tank stopped them again and troops told everyone to sit on the ground.

“After nearly 20 minutes, the soldiers asked the women and children to sit on the right side of the street, while the men were ordered to sit on the left side,” said Mr. al-Sayyed. “People were terrified and their eyes were filled with fear,” he said, adding: “Mothers were crying for their grown sons, not wanting to be separated from them, fearing that they would be killed or arrested.”

Eventually, it was Mr. al-Sayyed’s turn to be searched by the soldiers. He said he was ordered to strip down and was made to remain seated, blindfolded, for more than an hour. He was then released and caught up with his wife and children.

“All I could hear was crying, and all I could see were scared faces,” said Ms. al-Sayyed.

“My son Mohammed was very terrified when he saw a dead boy,” she added. “He just collapsed onto the sand, screaming in a completely unhinged way, and all I could do was cry along with him.”

Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting from Istanbul.