Early in the war, the Christian villagers of Aitou in Lebanon’s far north rarely heard the buzz of drones or the sounds of bombs exploding — daily occurrences in the south, where Israel is battling the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Then a displaced Shiite family of tobacco farmers from the south arrived in Aitou, seeking refuge.

In the days that followed, more relatives joined the family. On Oct. 14, a man who was believed to be distributing aid money for Hezbollah drove up to the house where the family was staying and took bags full of cash inside, according to two neighbors and a man who delivered water to the family.

Minutes later, an Israeli airstrike flattened the house and killed the entire family along with the man who had brought the money. Some of the bills, both U.S. dollars and Lebanese pounds, were seen blowing in the air at the site immediately after the blast.

Only a statue of St. Charbel, a Maronite saint, remained standing just below the destroyed building.

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict escalated drastically in September, sending hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Shiite Muslims from southern Lebanon, fleeing their homes. Many sought refuge in areas dominated by other faiths and sects and Israel’s bombardments seemed to track the displaced as they dispersed across the country. Strikes like the one on Aitou, outside of Hezbollah-dominated southern Lebanon, began to rise.

These attacks disrupted life in previously safe places, inflaming sectarian tensions that have long smoldered just below the surface of Lebanese society. They spread a fear that wherever the displaced turned up, Israeli bombs would follow.

Asked about the attack on Aitou, the Israeli military said only that a strike on northern Lebanon in mid-October had targeted a Hezbollah figure and it was checking whether Lebanese civilians had been killed. Lebanese military officials said that they did not know the identity of the man who had brought the money.

But neighbors who came to commiserate with the Christian owners of the bombed house vented frustration with Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political faction in Lebanon, which seeks Israel’s destruction.

Elias, a Christian friend of the landlord, urged Hezbollah to defeat Israel if it could.

“But if not, shut up. Don’t invite them here,” said Elias, 54, who asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of repercussions. “You gave them a big invitation with your shelling,” he added, referring to Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel over the past year in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza after Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war.

A small country of just over five million people, Lebanon has long been divided along sectarian lines. Maronite and Orthodox Christians, Druse, and Sunni and Shiite Muslims, who follow somewhat different interpretations of Islam, are just some of the communities that hold sway.

Sectarian divisions fueled the country’s 1975-90 civil war, which ended with a renewed division of power along religious and sectarian lines. The result has been political paralysis and a dysfunctional state that lacks even a working power grid.

Many of the warlords responsible for the civil war are still prominent political players 30 years later.

The horrors of the civil war still haunt Lebanese society — so much so that the defense minister in late October held a news conference in which he specifically warned against “fitna,” Arabic for “civil strife,” and made clear that he saw a grave danger in anything that stoked religious or sectarian divisions.

When the displaced first began to arrive in other communities, they found widespread sympathy from fellow citizens who gathered blankets and food and helped them find shelter in an extraordinary show of solidarity. But then came the Israeli airstrikes, and warmth gave way to worry that Hezbollah members might be among the fleeing crowds.

Tens of thousands of Shiite families in Lebanon receive financial support from Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the group has been handing out modest sums to some of those forced from their homes.

As the months passed, the numbers of displaced swelled, surpassing a million.

“They are in schools, in empty buildings, in villages. Wherever they go, people are afraid,” said Rabih Haber, a Lebanese political consultant. “Why? Because a small number will be armed, a small number will be targets.”

The Israeli airstrike on Aitou was so powerful that it killed the entire displaced Shiite family, 21 people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Some were children, according to the local hospital and the Christian landlords who had rented to them.

The blast reduced the house to rubble and sowed fear in the community that the same could happen if other displaced Shiite families sought refuge there.

“Something like this never happened in Aitou,” said Sarkis Alwan, 54, the brother of the landlord. “We never thought it would reach here.”

Elias, the landlord’s friend, had stopped by to commiserate after the airstrike. He said that his own family had long lived in the Aitou area.

“This is what will remain of our country — a pile of rubble and twisted wires,” he said.

The shift from welcome to wariness to hostility toward the uprooted population came quickly, said Yara Abdel-Naby, 21, a Shiite university student from the village of Bnaafoul in southern Lebanon.

She said her family lived so close to their Christian neighbors that when Israeli bombs started falling around Bnaafoul, the first place in which they took refuge was a church. They then moved to the house of a Christian friend, who let them stay for free.

“We thought for sure they would not bomb the church,” she said.

But after two weeks, the bombs grew so close and so frequent that her family felt compelled to move on. They encountered increasing distrust toward Shiites as they ventured north, Ms. Abdel-Naby said.

The most painful experience, she said, came when, after wandering from one makeshift accommodation to another, they found a place to rent in Chouf, a predominantly Christian and Druse region in central Lebanon.

When they arrived, the woman who owned the house saw Ms. Abdel-Naby with her long hair uncovered and was welcoming, Ms. Abdel-Naby recalled. But when Ms. Abdel-Naby’s mother and another relative emerged from the car in the head scarves and long robes that many Shiite women wear, the homeowner’s demeanor changed.

Soon she was finding excuses why the family could not stay, Ms. Abdel-Naby said. There were too many people, there would not be enough water. Their host complained that the new arrivals were making the place dirty.

Her family had paid for four days. But during their first night, their host informed them that someone else would be coming in the morning. They had to leave.

“Because of the situation, it is easier now for people to say these things,” Ms. Abdel-Naby said. “Before, they were embarrassed to show it. But now, it just gets worse every day.”

In other towns dominated by Christians and Druse in the mountains east of the capital, Beirut, people started to find leaflets in late October warning anyone associated with Hezbollah or Amal, another Lebanese Shiite faction, to leave the area “for your safety and our safety.”

In Beirut, an Armenian Christian mukhtar, or community leader, said that he, like a number of other mukhtars, had set up a hotline for residents to report to when they suspected that newly arrived displaced people who were renting in the neighborhood might be connected to Hezbollah.

The predominantly Christian neighborhood of Achrafieh in Beirut is now marked with the white flags of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian party. The flags function almost as a fence, signaling to displaced Shiites looking for a place to stay that they are unwelcome here.

“We don’t want anyone with a party background here,” said Maroun, 60, a dental technician, referring to Hezbollah, whose name means Party of God. He also asked to be identified by only his first name for safety reasons.

“Of course we feel solidarity with people who are displaced,” he added. “But we don’t want to endanger our families. We don’t want this war. It’s not our war.”

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

The Israeli military kept up its heavy bombardment of a once densely populated area adjoining Beirut on Friday after saying its ground troops were battling new targets in southern Lebanon, signaling a widening of the fighting that could further undercut cease-fire efforts.

The airstrikes on the Dahiya, the area south of the Lebanese capital where the militant group Hezbollah holds sway, were the latest in a string of bombardments this week. The Israeli military issued fresh evacuation warnings just after dawn on Friday, and missiles began landing soon afterward — leveling at least one high-rise residential building that had been identified in the warnings, and sending a thick dust cloud through the surrounding streets.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, as most residents had fled the Dahiya weeks ago when Israel’s bombing campaign began.

There were also signs that Israel’s ground invasion was broadening and that its troops were battling Hezbollah fighters deeper inside Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Thursday that its commandos were conducting ground operations against “several new enemy targets” in Lebanon. A senior Lebanese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, said on Thursday that Israeli ground forces were operating around the town of Chamaa, roughly three miles from the border.

Hezbollah also said overnight that it had attacked Israeli soldiers near Tayr Harfa, a town immediately south of Chamaa that it had described earlier as part of its “secondary line” of defense, and where clashes had not been previously reported. On Friday, the group said it had fired rockets at Israeli troops on the outskirts of Talloussah, another town where fighting was not known to have occurred.

A widening Israeli offensive would undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Biden administration has renewed a push to contain the fighting after repeated rounds of shuttle diplomacy over the past year failed.

Although Israel’s military leadership had originally hoped to conduct a more limited ground operation that focused solely on the first line of Lebanese villages along Israel’s northern border, they have decided to slightly expand that range, Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli brigadier general, said in an interview. The reason, he said, was that Israeli military officials realized that they needed to do more to clear out Hezbollah’s military installations, and believed that a broader offensive could force the armed group into making a diplomatic settlement on terms more favorable to Israel, he said.

“There’s an understanding that we need to ramp up the pressure and clear out a greater area, and that’s what they’re doing” General Avivi said.

But there has been no indication in public that Hezbollah or its patron, Iran, are willing to acquiesce to Israel’s demands, which include a withdrawal of the group from areas near the Israel-Lebanon border. While Hezbollah’s leaders and weapon stockpiles have been hard-hit, the group still poses a formidable threat, firing scores of rockets and drones into Israel daily and killing six Israeli soldiers on Wednesday in southern Lebanon.

A prominent Iranian official, Ali Larijani, met on Friday with Lebanese officials in Beirut to discuss cease-fire efforts, the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon said. Hezbollah is Iran’s most powerful regional proxy, and any diplomatic settlement would almost certainly be contingent on Tehran’s approval.

Earlier this month, Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, called U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stem the conflict with Israel futile, saying that the only way to end the war was “on the battlefield.” Still, he did not reject the potential for negotiations on suitable terms, noting that Israel must first end its offensive.

“We are ready for a long war,” he warned.

Efforts to reach a cease-fire are further complicated by the fact that, even if Hezbollah does agree to disarm in southern Lebanon, it is unclear how such an agreement would be enforced, or by whom. A U.N. resolution that ended the last major conflict in 2006 also called for Hezbollah to disarm along the border, but it has been considered a failure in the years since.

Israel has also insisted that any cease-fire deal preserve its right to attack Hezbollah again should the militant group violate the terms of a truce, a stance that both the Lebanese government and Hezbollah strongly oppose.

Israel began an intensified military campaign against Hezbollah in September, nearly a year after the group began firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. The Israeli offensive has set off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, displacing nearly a quarter of the population and buckling the country’s health system.

On Thursday, the United States said it was opposed to Israel’s intensifying bombing campaign in the Dahiya. Asked at a regular news briefing about the latest Israeli strikes, a State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said, “We do not want to see these kinds of operations in Beirut, especially as it relates to densely populated areas.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke by phone for an hour on Friday, in a discussion that German authorities said centered on prospects for bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.

It appears to have been the first call between Mr. Putin and a sitting leader of a large Western country since late 2022. The Kremlin confirmed the conversation and said Mr. Scholz initiated the call.

Mr. Scholz told Mr. Putin he believes that the deployment of North Korean troops to assist Russia in its war with Ukraine amounts to a serious escalation of the conflict, according to the German government’s summary of the call.

Mr. Scholz called on Mr. Putin to end the war, contending that Russia had not achieved any of its goals more than 1,000 days since its invasion, the summary said. Mr. Scholz condemned Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure and assured Mr. Putin that Germany would continue to assist Ukraine in the long term.

Despite Mr. Scholz’s apparent criticism of Russia’s war, the call suggests that contact between the Kremlin and western powers may increase, following the election last week of Donald J. Trump in the American presidential election.

Mr. Trump has expressed skepticism over continued American aid to Ukraine and has promised to push for immediate peace talks, injecting new uncertainty into the West’s commitment to supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

According to Russian state media, Mr. Putin told his German counterpart that any peace deal in Ukraine must be based on “new territorial realities and address the original causes of the conflict.”

Mr. Putin has repeatedly used these euphemisms to signal that Russia will not hand over Ukrainian territory it has captured and will demand guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality in any peace talks — for instance, an agreement that Ukraine would not join NATO.

The German chancellor spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine before the call with Mr. Putin, and he planned to call Mr. Zelensky again to update him.

Mr. Scholz had said in October that he was open to resuming direct communication with Mr. Putin, but Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, dismissed the idea, saying that there was no reason for a call, according to Russian media.

The Kremlin last month repeatedly downplayed reports in the German media about a looming conversation between Mr. Putin and Mr. Scholz.

“We are hearing words coming from Berlin — Scholz’s words about his readiness to open a dialogue,” Mr. Peskov told reporters on Oct. 19. “These are important words, because just a short time ago Germany was among the countries of the collective West that categorically rejected any contacts with Putin.”

Since then, Mr. Scholz has seen his governing coalition splinter. He fired his finance minister this month, effectively kicking one of his coalition partners out of the government, a move that set the stage for early elections in February. Mr. Scholz’s party trails its largest mainstream rival, the Christian Democrats, badly in the polls. But those two parties have largely agreed on continued support for Ukraine, even as surging populist parties on the far left and the far right have called for Germany to end its support for Kyiv.

The call comes as Mr. Scholz and other world leaders are getting ready to meet in Brazil for the G20 Summit starting on Monday. Mr. Putin, who used to be part of G20 summits, had stated in October that he would not attend this year.

The Kremlin told Russian state media that Mr. Putin and Mr. Scholz had “a detailed and honest interchange of opinions about the situation in Ukraine.” During the call, state media reported, Mr. Putin blamed Mr. Scholz for “an unprecedented degradation of relations between Russia and Germany.”

Mr. Scholz and Mr. Putin vowed to stay in touch, according to the chancellor’s spokesman.

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

The various institutions of postwar Europe were intended to keep the peace, bring warring peoples together and build a sense of continental attachment and even loyalty. From the growth of the European Union itself to other, softer organizations, dealing with culture or sports, the hope has always been to keep national passions within safe, larger limits.

But growing antisemitism, increased migration and more extremist, anti-immigrant parties have led to backlash and divisions rather than comity. The long war in Gaza has only exacerbated these conflicts and their intensity, especially among young Muslims and others who feel outraged by Israeli bombings and by the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza, a large proportion of them women and children.

Those tensions were on full display in the recent violence surrounding a soccer match between an Israeli and a Dutch team in Amsterdam, where the authorities are investigating what they call antisemitic attacks on Israeli fans, as well as incendiary actions by both sides. Amsterdam is far from the only example of the divisions in Europe over the Gaza war and of the challenges they present to European governments.

The normally amusing Eurovision Song Contest, which was held this year in Malmo, Sweden, a city with a significant Muslim population, was marred by pro-Palestinian protests against Eden Golan, a contestant from Israel, which participates as a full member.

The original lyrics to her song, “October Rain,” in commemoration of the 1,200 Israelis who died from the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel’s response in Gaza, were rejected by organizers for their political nature, so were altered to be less specific. Her performance was met with booing and jeering from some in the audience, but she did receive a wave of votes from online spectators, pushing her to fifth place.

It was hardly the demonstration of togetherness in art and silliness that organizers have always intended.

In Germany, where supporting the existence of Israel is a “Staatsräson,” a fundamental principle of the German state, there have been numerous examples of anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies. Palestinian supporters say they, too, have felt marginalized, their voices unheard or unheeded.

The police in Germany have shut down pro-Palestinian conferences and denied entry to pro-Palestinian speakers, while some German art organizations have withheld prizes to authors whom they have deemed to have been overly critical of Israel or of Israeli conduct in Gaza or the West Bank.

A year ago, the Frankfurt Book Fair was accused of “shutting down” Palestinian voices, after an awards ceremony to honor “Minor Detail,” a novel by a Palestinian author, Adania Shibli, was canceled because of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Just this week a documentary film about life in the occupied West Bank that won the Berlin film festival this year, “No Other Land,” opened in German cinemas with renewed charges that it exhibits “antisemitic tendencies,” according to the Berlin city website Berlin.de.

The director of the fair, Tricia Tuttle, rejected the charge, and the website changed its wording.

“The Gaza war has infected everything,” said Stefan Kornelius, a senior editor of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The war causes people to position themselves and support a one-sentence verdict on the Mideast,” he said. “It often runs counter to German Staatsräson on Israel, which supports Israel whatever it takes, and that counterreaction, especially in the arts, causes people to back the Palestinians with some intensity.”

What took place in Amsterdam, however, was of a different order and shook many in Europe beyond the Netherlands.

The match last week between an Israeli team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, and Amsterdam’s Ajax, was part of the Europa League competition run by the Union of European Football Associations, best known as UEFA.

While soccer has always been a deeply partisan sport, stoking nationalism and sometimes related violence, the sport’s near universality also provides a common bond and players from one country often play on teams in others.

Fearing the kind of violence seen in Amsterdam, the authorities in France, which like the Netherlands has a significant minority of Arab and Muslim citizens, deployed an extra 4,000 police officers for a soccer match Thursday evening on the outskirts of Paris between the national teams of Israel and France.

President Emmanuel Marcon, his prime minister and two former French presidents attended the match in a show of solidarity against antisemitism, and though demonstrators protested nearby, there was only a minor skirmish in the stands that the police quickly controlled.

Passions have been running high. In Germany, Berlin police are investigating reports that a youth team of Makkabi Berlin, a Jewish football club, was chased by a crowd yelling “Free Palestine” and bearing sticks and knives after a match with another Berlin club. The police said that they were investigating the incident on grounds of breach of the peace, incitement and insult.

If Oct. 7 changed so much for Israel and Jews abroad, Israel’s asymmetric response, which has brought accusations of multiple war crimes and even genocide, has changed much for Arabs and Muslims in Europe, too. Many Muslims in Europe say they feel threatened themselves.

The rise of extremist nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany, which has numerous neo-Nazi members and has used racist language to condemn immigration and call for the expulsion of nonnative German citizens, has heightened those anxieties.

Aiman Mazyek, chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, said that there is “a climate of fear” among Muslims since Oct. 7.

“Many Muslims in our country are uneasy, they’re afraid to speak out at all, and feel intimidated by the debate,” he said. There have been attacks on mosques and “on Muslims and also those who are perceived to be Muslims at a rate like never before,” he said.

According to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which monitors both antisemitism and anti-Muslim discrimination, nearly one in every two Muslims in the bloc face racism and discrimination in their daily lives, a sharp increase since 2016, it said in a report last month.

They are targeted, the report said, not just because of their religion, but also because of their skin color and ethnic or immigrant background. Young Muslims born in Europe and women wearing religious clothing are especially affected, the report said, and many face racial profiling by the police.

Given the heightened atmosphere, there was much attention on Thursday’s France-Israel match.

Hélène Conway-Mouret, vice president of the foreign affairs and defense committee of the French Senate, said that feelings among young Muslims were running especially high because of the horrors of the long Gaza conflict and confusion about where they belong.

“There is a real identity issue with second and third generation Muslim immigrants,” she said. “Their parents knew they were Moroccan, for example. But their children wonder, ‘Are they Moroccan,’ and yet they are not.” Nor are they always accepted as French, and face significant discrimination.

In a way, she said, support for the Palestinians “brings them together as a community.”

There have been nearly 70 arrests so far in Amsterdam, including 10 Israelis, for mostly minor offenses. Dutch officials have decried the attacks in Amsterdam as antisemitism, including what they said was an orchestrated effort to seek out Jews, as they also investigate inflammatory actions and vandalism by some Israeli fans.

“What happened over the past few days is a toxic cocktail of antisemitism, hooligan behavior and anger over the war in Palestine and Israel, and other countries in the Middle East,” Femke Halsema, the mayor of Amsterdam, wrote to the City Council.

“Antisemitism can’t be answered with other racism,” she added. “The safety of one group cannot be at the expense of the safety of another.”

The tiny copper gladiator stands ready for battle, decked out in a helmet and armor, an elaborate shield held in front as if bracing for his opponent’s blows.

The figure, just three inches tall, is some 2,000 years old, and was once perched on the handle of a knife. It was found almost three decades ago by a diver in the river Tyne, near Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England, which was for hundreds of years the northern frontier of the Roman Empire.

The knife handle remained in the diver’s private collection until it was recently offered on loan to English Heritage, a charity that manages many of the country’s historic monuments.

It will go on display in the museum at Corbridge Roman Town at Hadrian’s Wall next year, the charity said on Friday in a well-timed announcement that coincided with the release in Britain of Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” film, starring Paul Mescal.

Experts say the copper figure is evidence of how the celebrity status of gladiators reached into every corner of the once sprawling Roman Empire, including the far-flung outposts of Britain.

“It is rare to find a piece of gladiator memorabilia in Britain and to find such a well-preserved and interesting piece is particularly remarkable,” said Dr. Frances McIntosh, English Heritage’s curator for Hadrian’s Wall and the North East, in a statement.

Gladiators were enslaved, but despite that status, they could become major celebrities, as the bloody spectacles of the gladiator games played a major part in Roman cultural life, Dr. McIntosh said. As a result, gladiators inspired memorabilia from ceramics to cups to figurines.

According to English Heritage, the figure is a secutor, a class of gladiator with specific armor. The charity noted that the knife handle depicts a “strong muscular fighter with heavy equipment including a large shield sword and helmet,” and said that because it appears to be left-handed, which would have been considered unlucky at the time, the figurine could even represent a specific person.

The figure was found at Corbridge Roman Town, a historic site now managed by English Heritage and nestled along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, once a key defensive fortification at the Roman Empire’s northwestern reaches.

The man who discovered it will lend it to English Heritage, along with other Roman objects he found in the river, for an exhibition next summer.

Corbridge, now an archaeological site where visitors can walk through the remains of town streets, was for hundreds of years a bustling supply stop for Roman civilians in the area. It remained so until the end of the Roman presence in Britain at the start of the 5th century, when it was abandoned.

Britain was part of the Roman Empire for almost 400 years, beginning in 43 A.D. with an invasion under the emperor Claudius and lasting until around 410 A.D. when Roman troops withdrew from the island back into continental Europe. But the Roman era forever shaped the island, leaving behind a vast network of roads, fortresses, grand baths and villages.

And, it appears, they left behind some of their fan memorabilia too.

It feels as if the holiday season has come early in Moscow. The pedestrian streets are festooned with twinkling lights, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” is playing in cafes across the city, and the elite TSUM department store is already wrapped in red bunting.

In this atmosphere, Donald J. Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections might seem like an early holiday gift, too, given his record of praise for President Vladimir V. Putin.

Reports about Mr. Trump’s victory have been playing repeatedly on state television, with some broadcasts showing photos of Mr. Trump’s face under the inscription “Kamala, You’re Fired!”

Indeed there is a restrained sense of optimism that Mr. Trump’s triumph could lead to a breakthrough in U.S.-Russian relations, and possibly an end to the war in Ukraine, which is almost through its third year.

Still, the sliver of hope is tempered with wariness, fueled by the robust U.S. support for Ukraine. Russians are hardly celebrating the way they did for Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, when members of Parliament popped open champagne bottles.

Even as it has congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory, the Kremlin has portrayed the United States as an adversary essentially waging a proxy war against Russia.

“There is a hope, a modest hope, that lower level dialogue will at least resume, because it simply does not exist now,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said in an interview in his office. “But at the same time, we won’t put on rose-colored glasses. We are well aware that it is one thing to make statements during an election campaign, but when a person enters the Oval Office, everything is different.”

Depending on the people the president-elect appoints, change could be possible, he said.

During the parade of political talk shows assessing the American election, presenters dissect the resumes of potential cabinet appointees, wade deep into the impact of Republican control over Congress, and air voiced-over clips of American TV including CNN and Tucker Carlson’s online show. They also regularly play unflattering clips of President Biden.

“It’s not like Trump is seen as a Manchurian candidate,” Alex Yusupov, director of the Russia program at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a left-leaning political foundation in Berlin, referring to a politician whose strings are being secretly pulled by an enemy power. “I don’t think that the overall reaction is, ‘There is an ally in power now,’ or that it is a strategic win,” he continued.

He pointed out that President Biden showed a clear sense of restraint on issues like strikes deep into Russian territory, while Mr. Trump is considered more reckless and unpredictable.

But in one sense, Mr. Trump’s win is a significant victory for the Kremlin, said Mr. Yusupov. He cited the increasing popularity in Europe of right-wing parties that are also disrupting the international order established after the Second World War. “There is an immense schadenfreude, domestically speaking, that the old Western institutionalized world is eating itself up,” he said.

This “allows Russia to push away imminent questions about its economic model and the country’s future leadership,” said Mr. Yusupov.

In the short term, Russia is weathering the economic storm inflicted by Mr. Putin’s war and the Western sanctions it prompted. The International Monetary Fund recently raised its forecast for Russian economic growth in 2024 to 3.6 percent. That would be higher than growth in the United States and Europe, although inflation in Russia is expected to remain high, at nearly 8 percent this year. The I.M.F. cut its forecast for the Russian economy next year, with growth expected to slow to 1.3 percent.

Still, shopping malls are busy and Maybachs, BMWs, Range Rovers and other Western cars still clog the capital’s wide avenues during rush hour, along with lesser-known Chinese competitors.

If the war ends soon, as Mr. Trump has promised, Russia may be able to weather the economic storm better than the West expected.

“Moscow does think that there may be an important opportunity and they don’t want to miss it,” said Dmitri Simes, the former president of The National Interest, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., who now lives in Moscow and co-hosts “The Great Game,” a show on state television. (Mr. Simes was indicted in the U.S. in September, charged with violating economic sanctions against Russia for his work on Russian television. He denies wrongdoing).

One former senior Kremlin official said he had “reserved optimism” that common ground could be found for a ceasefire before the new year and a peace agreement by next spring or summer.

While Mr. Trump might be reckless, his opposition is “obsessed with being politically correct.” the official, who remains well-sourced among Moscow’s elite, said in an interview in an upscale suburb. “They repeat with a religious fervor the idea that ‘We cannot let Putin win,’ but the world is not black and white.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

In one sense, Russians seem to find it easier to understand Mr. Trump than other American politicians. He is far more like his Russian counterpart, Mr. Putin — a bombastic leader with a tough-guy image, a predilection for Versailles-like decor, and a track record of appointing relatives to key positions.

“Trump is recognizable,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at New York University who also lives in Moscow. “Trump is a palace guy. And Russians like palaces.”

There’s also a shared sense of disdain for what they view as excessively progressive values, and talk of human rights and freedoms that many Russians find not only disingenuous but hypocritical.

Even some anti-Putin Muscovites seemed to favor Trump in the run-up to the election, though their viewpoint holds inherent contradictions. For example, they resent the way Western countries cut them off from the global payments system, called SWIFT, in 2022, even though they blame these same countries for doing business with Mr. Putin while he spent decades eroding the human rights and democratic institutions.

Traveling to Western countries has become not only more difficult for Russians, but much more expensive, and anti-Kremlin Russians feel they have been collectively punished for Mr. Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine.

“Shall we block all of their credit cards now?” one anti-Putin Muscovite quipped about Americans who voted for Mr. Trump, asking for anonymity for fear of retribution.

Many Americans saw the 2016 election of Mr. Trump as an aberration, a result that could be more easily blamed on Russian influence campaigns than the genuine popularity of a populist candidate. While there is clear evidence that Moscow tried to influence this year’s result in Mr. Trump’s favor and cast doubt on its validity with disinformation, there is a prevailing sense of vindication among Russians that Mr. Trump appears to be genuinely popular with a large segment of the country.

“Trump is ‘poshlost’ incarnate,” said Ms. Khrushcheva, using the Russian word for ‘tasteless vulgarity.’ “Every nation gets the government it deserves. Ruled by Trump, who are those Americans to look down on us, lecture us, scold us and pontificate on values?”

The Russian ambivalence about Mr. Trump is evident at places like the Izmailovsky Bazaar, a sprawling tourist market that looks like a Disney-esque version of a medieval Russian Kremlin.

Row after row of stalls sell the classic Russian Matryoshki, painted wood nesting dolls. Many versions feature Mr. Putin, as well as glossy, newly arrived dolls showing other leaders like President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China, and a slew of leaders from the Gulf States, reflecting the nationalities of tourists who now come to Russia.

Sergei, a middle-aged vendor, said he had brought his old Trump dolls out of storage. Some had a dusty patina.

“No one is interested in them for now, and I haven’t ordered any new ones just yet,” he said of the Trump dolls, some of which were displayed side by side with dolls of Mr. Putin.

“Whether I do or not depends on what he does,” he said, “and if he can fix the mess between our countries.”