Senior American diplomats traveled through Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Friday to meet with militias controlling the country and with civil society groups, and to look for signs of the journalist Austin Tice and other missing U.S. citizens, the State Department said.

They are the first American diplomats to enter Damascus in more than a decade, according to the State Department, and they aim to help shape the political landscape of Syria after the rapid fall this month of Bashar al-Assad, the longtime autocratic leader.

The United States broke off diplomatic ties with Syria in 2012, the year after Mr. al-Assad ordered his forces to carry out mass atrocities during the country’s civil war.

The visit represents a tentative step toward engagement in Syria, a nation in which U.S. policy in recent years has usually involved the military, not diplomacy. The Biden administration has been in contact with militia leaders but has wrestled with how to directly engage, in part because the United States has designated the lead rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, as a terrorist organization.

In an early concession to the group, the United States will no longer pursue a bounty of up to $10 million for its leader, Ahmed al-Shara, formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

That announcement was made in a Friday briefing for reporters by Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, one of three Biden officials who visited Damascus and met there with Mr. al-Shara. She was joined by Roger D. Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, and Daniel Rubinstein, the new special adviser on Syria.

The meeting and the removal of the bounty were the latest signs of success for Mr. al-Shara’s effort to project a moderate image since taking power — a posture about which some officials and analysts remain skeptical.

The State Department first offered the reward in 2017, when Mr. al-Shara was a rebel fighter who had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and led a group that U.S. officials said had “carried out multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians,” along with kidnappings and the massacre of 20 residents in a Syrian Druze village.

Mr. al-Shara has since cut his ties to Al Qaeda and pledges to form an inclusive government that respects the rights of women and minorities. Ms. Leaf told reporters that “he came across as pragmatic” in their meeting, which she described as “quite good, very productive.”

She added that going forward, the United States “will judge by deeds, not just by words,” as it decides how to deal with Mr. al-Shara and his nascent government.

On the question of the bounty, Ms. Leaf said it would be “a little incoherent” for it to remain while American officials met with Mr. al-Shara, and quipped that she might otherwise be expected to call the F.B.I. to report his whereabouts.

But she did not directly answer a question about whether the Biden administration might revoke its designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist group, as the group has requested.

Ms. Leaf said the United States could provide legal protections for humanitarian groups who might fear exposure to American sanctions if they work with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to provide much-needed aid to the country.

The visit was the latest in a flurry of meetings between rebel leaders and Western officials looking to gradually open channels to the new Syrian authorities. Since Mr. al-Assad’s ouster this month, diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere have gone to Damascus. Qatar and Turkey are also in the process of reopening their embassies there.

The diplomacy comes during a realignment across the Middle East, where Syria is a major power and stood for decades as an emblem of Arab rule by a single family, one opposed in wartime by most Syrians. At least six foreign militaries were involved in the country’s nearly 14-year civil war, including Iran, Russia and the United States.

The U.S. diplomats also met with and heard from “Syrian civil society activists, members of different communities and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how we can help support them,” Ms. Leaf said.

She added that the diplomats had discussed with Mr. al-Shara the “transition principles” that American, Arab and Turkish officials agreed on at a meeting last weekend in Aqaba, Jordan. American officials have emphasized that groups in Syria must build an inclusive process for governance and fairly treat ethnic and religious minorities in the country, including Christians.

The Americans also raised “the critical need to ensure terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the U.S. and our partners in the region,” Ms. Leaf said.

And they made clear their intense interest in the fate of missing American citizens who were abducted in Syria, including Mr. Tice and Majd Kamalmaz, a Syrian American psychotherapist who traveled to Syria to treat traumatized people and was last seen at a government checkpoint in 2017. The State Department declared Mr. Kamalmaz dead earlier this year. The fate of Mr. Tice, who was kidnapped in 2012 while reporting in Damascus, is unclear.

Mr. Carstens provided no new details about either man in Friday’s call. The U.S. hostage envoy said he had been “rather amazed at the amount of secret prisons that Mr. al-Assad seems to have amassed” during his dictatorial rule. He said that in recent years the United States had identified “about six facilities that we believe have a high possibility” of having held Mr. Tice at some point.

Since Mr. al-Assad’s fall, he said, new information has pointed to as many as three more facilities the United States hopes to inspect in addition to the initial six. The total number warranting a search could wind up being as high as 40, Mr. Carstens said. He added that the United States would search “until we find the information that we need to conclude what has happened to Austin, where he is, and to return him home to his family.”

A news conference with the American officials that was scheduled to take place at the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus on Friday afternoon was canceled at the last minute because of “security concerns,” said Rana Hassan, a State Department official, though Ms. Leaf clarified that there was never any threat to the officials.

Mr. al-Shara’s group is conservative and follows tenets of political Islam, but it broke from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State years ago, and has even fought them. The rebel group has administered much of Syria’s opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.

Officials within the group have laid out an ambitious plan for establishing a new government in Syria, and rebel leaders have assumed key government positions to oversee a period of transition until March 1, 2025. After that point, rebel leaders say, a caretaker government is to be installed in consultation with Syrians of all backgrounds, and a committee to create a new Syrian Constitution will be established.

The process of taking groups off various official terrorist lists in Washington can take months or years because of the web of agencies involved and the potential political costs to leaders making that decision.

The toppling of Mr. al-Assad’s government has also shifted Syria’s other diplomatic ties. It sharply diminishes Iran’s influence in the region, depriving it of a key Arab ally that for decades was critical to its defense strategy. Whether Russia will be able to maintain its military bases in western Syria, which have been crucial to its ability to project power in the Middle East, remains unclear.

Israeli soldiers have occupied Syrian territory in recent days, and the Israeli air force has destroyed significant Syrian military assets. Turkey could wield behind-the-scenes power in Damascus, with more influence than ever over the rebels who now control most of Syria and who have long benefited from Turkish assistance.

On Friday, Turkish officials said they were in touch with Mr. al-Shara to assist in the country’s creation of a new Constitution, pledged to assist the new government with its energy needs and called for increased efforts to destroy “terrorist” groups within Syria, like the Islamic State and Kurdish fighters.

For years, the Kurdish-led forces, who control northeastern Syria, have been America’s most reliable partner in Syria, liberating cities seized by the Islamic State. But Turkey has long seen the Kurdish forces in Syria as an enemy, allied with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., in Turkey. That group has fought the Turkish state for decades and is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.

Nearly a week after a devastating cyclone, most streets have reopened in Mayotte, a tiny French island off the east coast of Africa.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, who toured the territory, got into tense exchanges with residents. And services like cellphone reception have slowly been returning to normal.

But despite all the efforts to move forward, a grim question hangs over this deeply impoverished archipelago: Exactly how many people died in Cyclone Chido?

The day after the disaster, France’s top official in Mayotte ignited broad alarm when he said of the death toll, “Maybe we will be closer to a thousand, maybe several thousand.”

A few days later, a lawmaker from the island told one of France’s largest newspapers that there were rumors of 20,000 victims. And a local television station reported that rescue teams believed that up to 60,000 people — 19 percent of the island’s population — had perished. The station later deleted the report from its social media accounts, but not before Mr. Macron was forced to address the claim, saying there was “nothing to corroborate” it, even if it was “very likely that there are many more victims.”

Yet, the official toll as of Friday remained 35, fewer than half of the 75 people reported to have died in the storm when it hit nearby Mozambique. And along the steep slopes of the shantytowns that had been most ravaged by the storm, there were few signs of mass casualties.

There were no scenes of public mourning. Almost no one interviewed personally knew someone who had died or was searching for a missing loved one. At the hospital, there were no crowds seeking to get into the morgue to identify relatives, and there was no stench of cadavers around the rubble where hundreds of people were already trying to rebuild their homes.

Still, there were far-flung communities officials had not made it to yet.

“I don’t believe in the possibility of thousands of dead,” said Bilal Ousseini, who works at the busiest mosque in the capital, Mamoudzou, where worshipers trickled in for the traditional Friday prayer.

Kaweni, the neighborhood that is home to the mosque, holds France’s largest shantytown. It was all but flattened by the cyclone and is the place where many people say more dead may be hidden in the rubble.

Along the narrow ridges where tin shacks were going back up, hearsay dominated the conversation surrounding the death toll.

“In Kaweni, there might be many dead,” said Soumaili Soifouane, an informal trader, who personally knew just one person who had died. “The day after the cyclone, we heard that there were nine dead. Just yesterday, we heard that they found three bodies.”

Undocumented migrants make up a large share of shantytown residents, and the French authorities say they are less likely to seek medical attention for fear of being arrested and deported. Many are also practicing Muslims, who traditionally bury their dead within 24 hours, suggesting that “a large number of people who have died in precarious housing will be buried before they can be officially recorded and counted,” the Interior Ministry said.

But Anli Daoud, who organizes funerals for the mosque in Kaweni, said rumors that families were burying their dead in communities without notifying anyone were untrue. The mosque had received only four bodies since the cyclone, he said.

“In our Muslim religion, it’s important to bury people in the cemetery,” he said. “Here in Kaweni, we bury our dead in the right way.”

Many residents may have avoided perishing in the cyclone because of all the warnings issued beforehand, Mr. Daoud said. Hours before it hit last Saturday morning, he said, he got on the microphone at the mosque and warned worshipers to take cover.

Mayor Ambdilwahedou Soumaila of Mamoudzou said people who might be stuck under the rubble had not yet been found because local officials were still waiting for support from Paris to enter communities and begin searching.

As he walked the streets of Mamoudzou to hear residents’ concerns on Friday, he said it was highly unlikely that search teams would find any survivors when they reached the wreckage of the shantytowns.

“It’s our responsibility to go,” said Mr. Soumaila, adding that he was scared that their worst fears of a high death toll could still come true.

Although the reports of 60,000 dead were “unreasonable,” he said, he believed the death toll could be hundreds or as much as a thousand.

“We will only be able to verify after the excavations,” he said.

Part of the uncertainty around the death toll is that some villages outside the capital remain isolated and have yet to receive any government outreach, residents said.

The French authorities say that they are mounting a concerted effort to clarify the toll and to reach out to those communities. The local representative for the French government has ordered dedicated survey teams to go from town to town and to coordinate with mayors and local aid organizations.

In the meantime, as foul-smelling piles of rotting waste grow on Mamoudzou’s streets almost a week after the cyclone, and as aid efforts have been sluggish, residents worry about the potential spread of diseases.

“Here in Kaweni, we haven’t seen the authorities,” said Mr. Daoud, the funeral worker at the mosque. “We had to clean up ourselves.”

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Paris.

Guatemalan officials raided a compound on Friday belonging to Lev Tahor, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect with past links to child exploitation. Prosecutors said they had removed at least 160 children and teenagers from the site who they believe were the victims of human trafficking and other offenses.

No arrests were made, officials told reporters in a news conference, but a regional prosecutor, Dimas Jiménez y Jiménez, said that the authorities were considering charges including human trafficking, forced pregnancy, mistreatment of minors and rape.

“We suspect these crimes were committed by a member of the community,” Mr. Jiménez y Jiménez said. His colleague, the special prosecutor against human trafficking, Nancy Lorena Paiz García, added that officers also found bodies that had been buried on the premises. The authorities say that they have no information that the sect has used the local cemeteries, but have been made aware of possible deaths of minors that must be investigated.

Friday’s raid took place after four non-Guatemalan minors ran away from the community in November and alerted the authorities. From their statements and evidence available to officials, including medical examinations, “we could establish that these minors have indeed experienced forms of human trafficking,” Ms. Paiz García told reporters.

A group of nearly 480 police officers, soldiers, prosecutors and psychologists showed up at the gated community early on Friday to secure and remove the minors, officials said. Agents also seized electronic devices, including computers and cellphones, searched for any evidence of child pornography and explored the area with dogs to detect buried human remains.

The raid is the latest effort by Guatemalan authorities to investigate the reclusive Lev Tahor community, made up of about 500 members living on a farm surrounded by walls and a padlocked gate in the Santa Rosa department, close to Guatemala’s border with Mexico.

Some members of the group, which started in Jerusalem in the 1980s, came to the Central American country in the early 2010s. They are of various nationalities, including Guatemalan, Israeli and Canadian. Before establishing themselves in Guatemala, the community lived in Canada.

In 2018, Guatemalan authorities began to take greater notice of the sect after receiving anonymous complaints related to its activities, Lucrecia Prera, head of the Attorney General’s Office for Children and Adolescents, said in an interview.

Around that time, former members and other fugitive minors told prosecutors of forced child pregnancies, forced marriages, lack of food and an absence of health services — including cases where girls had died along with their babies during childbirth, Ms. Prera said.

The group’s leaders also repeatedly obstructed the authorities from entering the compound, she added, often alleging the group was the target of religious and political persecution.

In September, Antonio Guzmán, a spokesman for Lev Tahor in Guatemala, issued a statement addressed to President Bernardo Arévalo, calling the national prosecutor’s office an “inquisitorial institution” and accusing the authorities of “harassing and persecuting us mercilessly.” The group also rejected accusations that it had harmed children in any way.

“At no point is this an action against a religious community,” Erick Eduardo Schaeffer Cabrera, an official with the Guatemalan Public Ministry, said during Friday’s news conference. “However, it is important to emphasize that no belief, organization or profession makes its members immune from the law.”

Lev Tahor, which translates to “pure heart” in Hebrew, is an offshoot of an anti-Zionist Hasidic sect. The group reportedly eschews technology and requires its female members to wear black robes from head to toe. Some former members, and an Israeli court, have called the group a dangerous cult.

This year, the United States Attorney’s Office announced that leaders of the sect had been sentenced to 12 and 14 years in prison for kidnapping and sex trafficking crimes in a case that involved two Jewish children who disappeared from their home north of New York City.

In a statement, an organization representing Guatemala’s Jewish community distanced itself from Lev Tahor, saying the group “is not part of our association” and expressing support for the authorities “in carrying out all the necessary procedures and investigations to protect the lives and integrity of minors.”

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threats of tariffs on allies and adversaries alike have unsettled companies and governments across Europe, setting off a scramble for what they fear could be a trans-Atlantic trade war.

Their nascent plans, including a closely guarded effort at the top levels of the European Commission, appear to be more proactive than what they were the first time Mr. Trump took office. But any attempt to form a united front on trade could be hampered by the sclerotic politics across much of Europe.

The French and German governments both collapsed this month. Austria and Belgium are struggling to form governing coalitions long after their most recent elections.

And no clear consensus has emerged on how to respond to whatever Mr. Trump might have in store. Divisions are already emerging between officials who favor a strategy of retaliation if he tries to impose new taxes on European exports and those who favor negotiation.

In a post on Truth Social early Friday, Mr. Trump said he had “told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!”

Economists warn that trade wars generally hurt all parties involved, clogging the exchange of goods and services and reducing economic growth. But the weakness of Europe’s economy since the start of the pandemic — and the political turmoil — could leave it particularly vulnerable to damage now.

In this year’s presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he would impose a new tax of 10 or 20 percent on all imports to the United States, regardless of their origin. Along with the vague threats to target Europe on Friday, he also issued direct warnings for Mexico, Canada, China and several emerging-market countries since his election.

Any such tariffs would endanger what is effectively the largest trading relationship for both the United States and the European Union, which traded more than $1.5 trillion in goods and services in 2023. Last year, the United States had a trade deficit with Europe, importing slightly more from the countries than it exported to them. Europe is already one of the biggest buyers of liquefied natural gas from the United States, which is the world’s largest supplier.

During the first Trump administration, Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum from European countries, pledging to reduce the trade deficit. Instead, the gap grew.

As Mr. Trump threatens new tariffs around the world, executives and political leaders across Europe also worry about absorbing aftershocks of any escalation in trade tensions between the United States and China. Those could divert a wave of low-cost exports from U.S. stores to those in Europe.

Officials in Brussels and national Parliaments are beginning to brainstorm possible retaliation or alternate strategies that do not involve taxing Americans.

The early effort within the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, includes analyses of what impact certain tariffs would have on different European countries and sectors, according to a senior European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the political sensitivity of the conversation. The group is discussing what American products to potentially target for tariffs in retaliation.

But the discussions are preliminary, as are similar preparations in Berlin and elsewhere. That’s largely because Mr. Trump’s trade plans remain opaque.

European Commission trade officials have not communicated with member states about a possible response, in part out of fear of appearing to want to proactively impose tariffs on America, said three European diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities.

One theory is that the European Commission could act as it did during the first Trump administration in 2018, when it implemented retaliatory tariffs on $3.2 billion of goods made by companies in areas where Mr. Trump had strong support. That included tariffs on motorcycles by Harley-Davidson, based in Wisconsin, and on other products including bourbon, playing cards and orange juice.

Ignacio García Bercero, a former trade director at the European Commission, said officials should offer to increase imports from the United States, especially in energy and defense, as part of negotiations with Mr. Trump to avoid tariffs. At the same time, the European Union also needs to be ready to implement retaliatory tariffs.

“Any strategy needs to include both elements,” said Mr. García Bercero, a fellow at Bruegel, a research firm in Brussels. “Otherwise we would not be credible in a negotiation.”

European officials have already floated a plan to increase imports from the United States, including of liquefied natural gas, to placate Mr. Trump. Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, suggested a similar move in late November and warned against retaliatory tariffs.

Another idea is to appeal directly to Mr. Trump’s top team about how European companies have U.S. factories and to explain how any tariffs could force them to shrink their U.S. workforces, said two European diplomats speaking on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject matter. Although German officials and business leaders tried that approach during Mr. Trump’s first administration, it did very little to protect them from his tariffs.

European companies are already weighing whether to shift production or parts of their supply chain, while pressing for a continental response to kick-start their competitiveness.

Patrick Martin, the president of Medef, France’s biggest business trade group, said that French exporters were looking at ways to protect themselves from higher tariffs that could make it harder to compete in America or with Chinese rivals.

“We are obviously not indifferent to the announcements of Donald Trump and his team,” he said. “Europe must not bow down but assert its power and capabilities.”

Mr. Martin said that the reaction of French companies to tariffs would differ depending on their sector and size. Thirty-eight of the largest 40 French companies have production facilities in both Mexico and the United States, including automakers like Stellantis and Renault-Nissan, the cosmetics giant L’Oréal and the Danone food group. Some could try to shift production to the United States, a move that would dovetail with Mr. Trump’s stated goal for tariffs.

The French company Airbus, the largest commercial airplane manufacturer, which has a plant in South Carolina and works with suppliers in Mexico, said last month that it would pass along any new tariff costs to its airline customers.

Others in France, such as producers of Burgundy wine, can’t move production to the United States and will bear the brunt of any tariffs, Mr. Martin said.

Christian Diemer, a top official of the German trade group BDI who owns a business making special screws in Ohio and in Europe, said that he was more concerned about American tariffs on China. If U.S. tariffs pushed a new wave of Chinese products toward Europe, it would further hurt European companies already struggling with energy prices that are two or three times as high as they are in the United States, he said.

Some executives are betting that a strong U.S. dollar would offset the impact of tariffs on European goods. When the dollar’s value is high compared with other currencies, Americans are able to buy more easily imported goods, which effectively become cheaper.

Others are hoping that if Mr. Trump imposes tariffs, they may be able to negotiate exemptions.

Mostly, business groups are warning their members to brace for what could be ahead.

“Companies need to be proactive and run through different scenarios for their business planning — now,” the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria, in Germany, recently told its members.

For decades, Russia has been trying to rebuild its influence in the Middle East. But after the rapid collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the Kremlin is scrambling to salvage whatever it can.

President Vladimir V. Putin sought to spin events in Syria as a success for Russia, which provided crucial military support for President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s long and brutal civil war, and received two important military bases in return.

“We came to Syria 10 years ago to prevent the creation of a terrorist enclave there,” he told a marathon news conference on Thursday. “We have achieved that goal, by and large.”

The reality of Russia’s situation is quite different from Mr. Putin’s rosy assessment, according to military experts, political analysts and a U.S. government official. If the rebel factions that are now leading Syria decide to expel the Russian forces from the two bases, Moscow will be left without the resources or the real estate to maintain a significant military presence in the region, they said.

One veteran Russian military analyst, speaking anonymously out of concern for the safety of his relatives still in Russia, called Moscow’s current maneuvering “diplomatic dancing” that did not comport with reality.

Syria once served three goals for Russia

After Mr. Putin decided to intervene militarily in Syria in 2015, the Russians built an air force base at Hmeimim, near the northern city of Latakia, and expanded a Soviet-era naval fueling station at the Mediterranean port of Tartus into a full-fledged base.

That presence achieved three main goals, experts said.

First, since Russia was internationally isolated after it annexed Crimea in 2014, its military presence in Syria pushed the United States, Israel and Turkey, and the region at large, to engage diplomatically with Moscow. Its naval presence at Tartus, including three large warships and a submarine, forced NATO military planners to take notice.

Second, it showed authoritarian leaders around the world that Russia could shore up their regimes with overwhelming force. Its carpet bombing of opposition positions in Syria helped to preserve Mr. al-Assad’s rule.

Third, Syria — a geographic pivot point in the region — created a vital logistics hub, a warm-water port on the Mediterranean and an air base to ferry weapons and ammunition to Russian forces in Africa and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Influence and logistics are at risk

Those goals are now all in jeopardy. Washington is in the midst of a presidential transition, so its Syria policy is in flux, though President-elect Donald J. Trump made his disdain for engagement pretty clear during his first term by referring to the country as “blood and sand.”

Turkey wants to supplant Russia as the dominant foreign ally in Damascus. Israel, which used to limit its attacks in Syria to avoid conflict with Russian forces, has been bombing military sites with impunity and occupying new territory in the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967.

The speed with which the Kremlin dropped its support for Mr. al-Assad at the end surely dented its reputation as a reliable protector of authoritarian regimes.

As for a logistics hub, it is unclear whether there is a viable substitute for Syria. The Russians may be looking at increasing or diversifying their presence in countries such as Libya, Sudan and Yemen, according to an American official. But all of those countries come with their own downsides, including civil wars and partners who are keen to extract a large price. Expanding Russia’s presence in those places could happen, but not quickly, the official said.

It has the most substantial presence in Libya, home to an estimated 1,200 Russian mercenaries. But geographic distance is a hurdle: Flying heavy military loads to Libya from Russia without refueling is a serious challenge.

“If they lose Syria, it would be very difficult for them to reroute logistics through Libya,” said Gleb Irisov, a former air force officer and military analyst for the TASS news agency. “They will be flying there on vapors.”

Can Russia keep its Syrian bases?

Russian diplomacy has already pivoted to cultivating Syria’s new rulers.

Russian state propaganda, in the hours after Mr. al-Assad fled to Moscow, switched from calling Hayat Tahir al-Sham, the main rebel faction behind his overthrow, “terrorists” to the “armed opposition.”

“The terrorist label was completely dropped in this pragmatic move to secure a modicum of influence in Syria, especially the bases,” said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based expert on Russian foreign and security policy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

Russia has tried to engage with the new rulers in Damascus, Mr. Putin said, adding that the bases might be used to provide humanitarian aid. Russia has implemented such volte-face policy decisions before, welcoming delegations from the Taliban in Afghanistan that it once labeled terrorists.

At first glance, it might seem that the Syrian opposition movement, having suffered through the bloody carpet bombing of its village strongholds by the Russian air force, would be eager to expel it.

But Russia is not without leverage. It can offer various incentives, from financial payouts to military equipment to oil, though its resources have been stretched thin by the war in Ukraine.

It can also offer legitimacy by recognizing the new Syrian government. Western governments currently designate H.T.S., which has roots in Islamic State and Al Qaeda, as a terrorist organization. The United Nations has done the same, but Russia, with its seat on the Security Council, could help get that designation removed.

Russia has started shifting some of its forces and their equipment out of Syria, analysts said. But advanced systems, like the S-400 air defense units used to protect the military installations, seem to still be in place.

Movement so far appears to involve mostly military police units and hundreds of troops stationed in small outposts around Syria, analysts said. Poll data show that about 7,465 soldiers stationed in Syria voted in Russia’s presidential elections last March.

Depleted by the invasion of Ukraine

During the Cold War, Russia had wide influence in the Middle East, with a heavy military presence in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Algeria. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia largely abandoned the region, lacking both resources and interest.

Mr. Putin initially thought of the Syria deployment in 2015 as a means to reverse that decline, analysts said, and reassert Russia’s role as a global power. The Kremlin followed up with arms sales to some Arab capitals like Baghdad and Cairo, which were disenchanted with the United States.

But no major deals have been announced since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, experts said. Russia now has few surplus military resources available to sell or deploy overseas.

“Ukraine changed everything,” said the veteran military analyst. The war there limited Russia’s ability to play what he called “games” in the Middle East and Africa. “They put all their resources into Ukraine, and they have no other resources to play these games.”

Julian E. Barnes, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Alina Lobzina and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

The New York City comptroller, who oversees hundreds of billions of dollars in pension investments, is pressuring some of the world’s major sugar buyers to stop profiting off child labor, debt bondage and coerced hysterectomies in western India.

The city’s pension funds own nearly $1 billion in stock in Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Mondelez and others. Those companies, or their franchisees, are among those that buy sugar from the Indian state of Maharashtra. An investigation by The New York Times and The Fuller Project this year revealed a brutal, endemic labor system there — one that is at times enforced by threat of kidnapping and assault.

“We will bring pressure to bear on the companies we invest in who participate in that system by sourcing their supply from it and by funding it,” the New York comptroller, Brad Lander, said in a recent interview.

Mr. Lander is urging companies to work with labor groups in Maharashtra and to demand supply-chain improvements. He has rallied institutional investors including BNP Paribas Asset Management, based in Paris; Sands Capital of Virginia; and the London-based Schroders to do the same. Those firms hold hundreds of millions of dollars in stock in the sugar-buying companies.

The Biden administration is also applying pressure. The State Department has encouraged American companies to use their buying power as leverage to push sugar mills to make changes, according to a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Diplomats have also encouraged companies to work with labor unions.

An ethics body that advises Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (the world’s largest, at about $1.8 trillion) is also investigating at least one company in its portfolio, according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiry. The company under investigation is unclear. The fund holds stock in two sugar mill owners, Dalmia Bharat and DCM Shriram, and in a major Pepsico franchisee, Varun Beverages, according to public disclosures.

The U.A.W. Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, a $60.5 billion pension fund, signed a letter pushing companies to improve labor practices, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Some of those who confirmed the efforts spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or did not want to undermine their outreach to the companies. The banks and investment firms themselves declined to comment.

The moves represent an attempt to pressure companies that, otherwise, face little incentive to change. Sugar is a huge industry in Maharashtra, so buyers and producers alike have tremendous amounts at stake. Indian politicians could pass and enforce labor laws, but they own most sugar mills in Maharashtra and deny or downplay problems.

Abuse is well documented. Female workers are pushed to get hysterectomies to keep working, often to avoid menstruating or becoming pregnant in dangerous, unsanitary conditions. The industry is also rife with child labor. Workers are kept in debt bondage, The Times and The Fuller Project have reported.

The revelations have become a diplomatic issue, too. A group representing cooperative sugar mills in Maharashtra said that it had complained to the U.S. Consulate in the Indian city of Mumbai about “misleading” news reports. The group suggested that there was a conspiracy to discourage companies from buying Maharashtra sugar.

None of the investors are calling for that. Many say they would prefer that corporations keep buying from Maharashtra and pushing for improved labor practices.

But a core issue is that Maharashtra sugar mills pay their laborers through middlemen and reject responsibility for working conditions, minimum wages and other basic rights. Laborers are paid advances that function as loans, often without documentation.

No companies appear to be seeking fundamental change in how workers are recruited and paid. Labor experts say that, until they do, exploitation will continue.

“We would be encouraging companies to provide remedy to workers,” said Caroline Boden of Mercy Investment Services, a small asset manager that focuses on socially responsible investing.

There are tentative signs that companies are responding. Here is how some have reacted.

Coca-Cola

The world’s largest beverage company has known since at least 2019 that children were cutting sugar for them in Maharashtra and that laborers were working off debts to their employers.

The company said this month that a group it had helped establish would, in January, begin providing at least some cane cutters with first aid, health and safety training. Four mills, including three that Coke buys from, will participate, the company said. The group will also train factory middlemen on wage transparency and seek to formalize contracts with farm workers.

The company also said that it had worked to provide clean water, sanitation and female hygiene products to fieldworkers.

Coke would not say how much money it had invested in those efforts.

Pepsico

Pepsi said this spring that it was looking into the reports of abuses.

Varun Beverages, a major Pepsi franchisees, this year opened its third manufacturing and bottling plant in Maharashtra.

Pepsi has said that its franchisee buys relatively little sugar from Maharashtra when taken in the context of the state’s huge production.

Nestlé

At first, Nestlé told The Times that it had stopped buying sugar from Maharashtra last year “based on the due diligence work we conduct as part of our human rights framework.”

That suggested that the company had uncovered abuses.

Pressed for details, a spokeswoman said that she had been mistaken. She said that Nestlé had stopped buying from Maharashtra because of a 2022 Indian ban on sugar exports.

A company document dated late last year, however, lists Maharashtra suppliers. Nestlé said that document was outdated.

In interviews, one sugar mill said that it had sold to Nestlé this year. Others said that Nestlé continued to buy from them through brokers.

Nestlé says that is inaccurate.

Mondelez

Mondelez, a conglomerate that includes Cadbury and Nabisco, said that it was “taking steps to help address labor concerns on sugar farms in this region.” It did not elaborate.

The company said it had stopped buying sugar from the Indian sugar company Dalmia Bharat, which owns a mill linked to unnecessary hysterectomies and abuses.

Dalmia, which also supplies Coca-Cola, recently arranged to provide sanitary pads, shoes, socks and gloves to some workers. A doctor had spoken to female workers about menstrual health.

Qadri Inzamam, a reporter with The Fuller Project, and Ankur Tangade contributed reporting from Beed, India.