A quarter century after assuming power, President Vladimir V. Putin told Russians in his New Year’s Eve address on Tuesday that their country was overcoming every challenge and moving forward.

But he did not say where Russia was going, even as it takes huge casualties in its war in Ukraine, struggles with rising inflation and absorbs diplomatic blows abroad.

Much of his short speech was characterized by omissions. While Mr. Putin on Tuesday honored the country’s “fighters and commanders,” he invoked Russians’ pride in defeating Nazism and declared 2025 “the year of the Defender of the Motherland,” he did not say who the country was fighting or why.

It was a conspicuous omission nearly three years after he decided to invade neighboring Ukraine. The war has claimed the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Russian soldiers, reshaped Russia’s economy and upended its place in the world.

Nor did Mr. Putin address inflation, the main concern of most ordinary Russians, or a host of other economic challenges. And while the speech was notable for marking 25 years since he took power in 1999 — an era in which he cemented his rule over Russia — it contained no hint of Mr. Putin’s vision for the country beyond the broadest platitudes.

“We are certain that everything will be fine,” he said.

Mr. Putin’s vague address on the eve of Russia’s main public holiday underlined the biggest contradiction of his wartime leadership: a drive to mobilize society and steel it for a prolonged conflict, while maintaining a sense of normalcy in everyday life.

Unlike his remarks in 2022, the first year of the invasion, his speech on Tuesday did not mention Ukraine, omitting even his usual euphemism for the war as a “special military operation.” He also didn’t mention President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Putin’s message of optimism and stability masked an uncertain outlook facing Russia in 2025, as well as a string of recent geopolitical setbacks that have shaken the country’s global status.

Russian forces have been gradually gaining territory in eastern Ukraine, but have thus far failed to achieve a breakthrough that could alter the contours of the war. Ukrainian forces remain in control of territory inside western Russia, nearly half a year after launching a surprise incursion there, a persistent embarrassment for Mr. Putin.

And Russia’s slow battlefield gains have come at the cost of staggering casualties, while the pace of recruitment for new soldiers is slowing despite offers of ever greater sign-up bonuses and other financial incentives. (Ukraine, too, faces major problems of replacing injured and killed troops.)

On the international stage, Mr. Putin has also suffered recent blows to his standing. He lost his biggest ally in the Middle East this year, with the sudden downfall of President Bashir al-Assad of Syria, weakening Russia’s influence across the region.

And just last week, a crash of a Russian-bound jet, operated by the state-owned Azerbaijan Airlines, is threatening to undermine the Kremlin’s relations with friendly former Soviet states that are crucial to Russia’s access to foreign goods.

President Ilham Alyiev of Azerbaijan blamed Russian air defenses for the crash, which killed 38 of the 67 people on board. Mr. Putin made a vague apology, which failed to placate Mr. Alyiev, who publicly demanded that Russia accept responsibility for the crash, compensate the victims and punish the officials responsible.

Azerbaijan’s forceful rejection of Mr. Putin’s account suggested the limits of Mr. Putin’s frequently ambiguous language, which he has long used to disguise his intentions and keep options open.

Perhaps the biggest gap between Mr. Putin’s upbeat remarks and reality concerned the Russian economy.

Record public spending and steady oil exports have allowed Russia to bypass the worst effects of Western sanctions, and the country has avoided the economic collapse predicted by many Western economists at the start of the invasion.

But growing indications suggest that Russia’s economic boom, created by the ramp-up of military production, is wearing off, leaving the country with stubborn inflation, crippling labor shortages and slowing growth.

The economy is expected to grow 0.5 to 1 percent next year, down from 3.5 to 4 percent in 2024. Russia’s annual inflation rate is estimated to be 10 percent in 2024, with the prices of many basic foodstuffs growing at double or triple that overall figure.

The national currency, the ruble, last month fell to its weakest level since the start of the war, reducing the Russians’ purchasing power.

The pain caused by inflation was reflected during Mr. Putin’s annual news conference this month: Complaints about rising food prices were the most common topic of the remarks sent by Russian citizens to the president.

The marked slowdown in growth has taken place even as the Kremlin has poured a record 8 percent of Russia’s gross domestic product into the war effort, a figure that represents 40 percent of the federal budget, according to the economic analysts Alexander Kolyandr and Alexandra Prokopenko.

“Kremlin has proved to be unable to simultaneously continue the war, finance social and infrastructure projects and maintain low inflation and stable exchange rate,” the analysts wrote in a Russian media outlet, The Bell, last week. “Russia is slowly but certainly moving toward stagnation and economic degradation, a trend that won’t stop even if the fighting ends in 2025.”

Mr. Putin on Tuesday brushed off such predictions, saying Russians’ plans and wishes would be realized.

“When we are together, everything will come true,” he said. “Happy New Year, dear friends.”

The annual New Year’s Eve speech by Germany’s chancellor is traditionally heavy on national unity, reflections on the past 12 months and calls for optimism.

While all those ingredients were present in this year’s televised address by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he also included an oblique reference to a non-German who has taken a strong, some might say baffling, interest in the country’s politics: Elon Musk.

Mr. Scholz’s New Year’s Eve speech, which will probably be his last, comes amid unusual political turbulence in modern Germany and rising polarization in Europe. The tone of his address reflected the stakes for the country as it faces stalled economic growth, with the chancellor calling for “solidarity” while acknowledging that life had become more expensive for many.

The three-party coalition government that came to power in 2021 collapsed in November, and Mr. Scholz, a center-left Social Democrat, lost a confidence vote this month, triggering federal elections that will be held on Feb. 23.

As the German public prepares to go to the polls, Mr. Musk, a key adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, has spoken out on social media and in a newspaper opinion essay in favor of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. His support of the group, which has neo-Nazi ties and is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for being extremist, has rattled lawmakers and prompted criticism from mainstream leaders across the political spectrum.

In a wide-ranging speech that touched on Germany’s flagging economy, the upcoming 35th anniversary of German reunification, and the recent attack on a Christmas market that left five dead and 200 wounded, Mr. Scholz did not call out Mr. Musk by name, but one carefully worded section seemed to be squarely aimed at him.

“Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you — the citizens,” Mr. Scholz said. “It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels.”

He continued: “In our debates, one can be forgiven for sometimes thinking the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it will garner. But it won’t be the person who yells loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here. Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people.”

Polls suggest the conservative Christian Democratic Party is on track to win the election, but the anti-immigrant AfD is in second place, with around 20 percent.

It is unclear to what extent Mr. Musk’s endorsement — first in a social media post that read “Only the AfD can save Germany,” and then in a 600-word essay in a national paper — will influence the race.

A government spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, said at a news conference on Monday that while everyone has the right to an opinion, Mr. Musk was trying to influence the German election, which she called a “German affair.”

She added, “I think it is good to point out once more that this is a recommendation to vote for a party that is suspected of being right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and that has already been recognized as right-wing extremist in parts.”

Mr. Musk’s attempts to sway German voters have unified lawmakers from the center-left and center-right in condemnation. Friedrich Merz, who is the head of the right-leaning Christian Democrats and leading the polls, called Mr. Musk’s endorsement “overbearing and presumptuous.”

“I cannot remember a comparable case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of Western democracies,” Mr. Merz said in a newspaper interview.

Lars Klingbeil, a co-chairman of Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, went as far as to compare Mr. Musk with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “Both want to influence our elections and specifically support the anti-democratic AfD,” he said in a newspaper interview. “They want Germany to be weakened and plunged into chaos.”

Because political campaigns are largely financed by the German state, donations play a much smaller role in Germany than they do in the United States. By law, it would be illegal for Mr. Musk, as a non-German or non-European Union citizen, to donate more than 1,000 euros (about $1,000) directly to the AfD.

However, the AfD hopes that the endorsement of Mr. Musk, a businessman and car maker who was once widely respected in Germany, improves its visibility. Alice Weidel, the lead candidate for the AfD, posted sections of Mr. Musk’s opinion piece on her social media profile.

Mr. Musk appears to have a special dislike for Mr. Scholz, calling him “a fool” on X in November.

Asked about the insult, Ms. Hoffmann, the government spokeswoman, said on Monday, “Freedom of expression also includes the greatest nonsense.”

Three Russian soldiers race down a cratered road on electric scooters, the video shows, while others speed across muddy fields on all-terrain vehicles.

More Russians surge forward on foot, scrambling for cover in the ruins of blasted out homes, according to the video of the battle on the outskirts of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine filmed by the Ukrainian military. As the fighting raged, other Russian troops arrived in armored personnel carriers.

The 12th Special Operations Brigade Azov, a Ukrainian unit, rained down cluster munitions, chased the Russians with drones and engaged in close-quarter combat, the video shows. The footage was verified by military analysts and some has been posted on YouTube.

At the end of the day, the assault failed, said Lt. Col. Dmytro Pavlenko-Kryzheshevskyi, the 36-year-old chief of intelligence for the brigade, which provided the video.

The battle, he said, was typical of the assaults taking place across hundreds of miles of the front, where Ukrainian forces are waging dozens of pitched battles for patches of land no bigger than a few city blocks.

Despite staggering Russian losses — with more than 1,500 killed and wounded every day in recent weeks, according to Western estimates — the scope of attacks continues to grow, according to soldiers at the front and military analysts.

And Russia is throwing greater numbers of soldiers into the assaults than it did in some earlier stages of the fighting, Colonel Pavlenko-Kryzheshevskyi said.

The Russian troops have also been increasingly using electric scooters, motorcycles and ATVs, which allow them to disperse quickly across the front, he said.

“Hitting just one piece of equipment carrying 15 people, well, that’s possible, it can be done quite easily,” he said. “But when those 15 people are riding electric scooters, then that’s a very big problem.”

“For them, it’s quite normal to use 150 to 200 soldiers at a time for offensive actions,” he said, speaking via video from a command post on the front and describing the battle around Toretsk in late December that was shown on the video footage.

The relentless Russian attacks have led to a buckling of the lines in parts of eastern Ukraine, experts say.

“This has been the most difficult period for Ukraine since early 2022,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Russia has “gained momentum, seizing more territory each month since August,” he said.

The widespread assumption that Russia could not sustain this punishing pace of operations has proved misplaced, Ukrainian soldiers said.

“It’s important to understand that they have significant reserves,” Colonel Pavlenko-Kryzheshevskyi said.

The most critical situation for the Ukrainian forces remains in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where the Russians have been slowly but steadily advancing on Pokrovsk, a vital military hub.

The Russians have advanced to within two miles of the main highway into the battered city, according to the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian research group.

To the north, fierce urban battles are raging in Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, towns that have long stood as the barricades holding back direct Russian assaults on the agglomeration of the major cities at the heart of the Donetsk region.

To the south, a pocket of Ukrainian resistance around the small city of Kurakhove is steadily eroding, opening the prospect of a Russian push through the southern Donbas to the Dnipro region, which is now the industrial heart of the nation.

In recent days, Russia has also mounted a series of attacks on the islands that dot the Dnipro river south of Zaporizhzhia.

“I almost daily receive intelligence reports,” said Oleksandr, a 21-year-old drone operator with the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, said when reached by phone. “And damn it, almost every day, trucks arrive carrying boats on trailers.”

Like most soldiers interviewed for this article, he asked to be identified only by his first name in accordance with military protocol.

While Ukrainian commanders and military analysts do not think Russia will be able to mount a successful large-scale offensive across the Dnipro, they said that the Kremlin may be trying to further extend Ukrainian forces.

At the same time, Ukraine appears determined to hold a stretch of land it seized last summer in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Kremlin’s bid to drive the Ukrainians back across the border is being bolstered by more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers. Russia’s renewed offensive has failed to dislodge the Ukrainians and more than 1,000 North Koreans have been killed or wounded in recent days, according to the United States.

The fierce fighting is taking place against a backdrop of deep political uncertainty.

While military analysts believe recent shipments of American and other Western military assistance should sustain Ukraine for several months, it remains to be seen how President-elect Donald J. Trump will try to achieve his stated goal of bringing the war to a rapid end.

At the moment, Ukraine’s tenuous position on the front puts it at a disadvantage.

With Russian forces holding the initiative on the battlefield, President Vladimir V. Putin has rejected any settlement short of a deal that would be tantamount to Ukrainian surrender.

The only way to force the Kremlin to negotiate, supporters of Ukraine have argued, is to create leverage by raising the cost of the war for Moscow.

But first, the Ukrainian military needs to stabilize its defenses, soldiers and analysts say.

“The question is whether the front line will stabilize,” said Major Taras, the deputy battalion commander of the 68th Jaeger Brigade, which is fighting around Pokrovsk. “Unfortunately, there are no signs of that yet.”

As Ukraine’s lines have fragmented along parts of the front, longstanding problems in troop management have grown more urgent, soldiers and analysts said.

Mr. Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment said that Ukraine needed to address how it both mobilizes and manages its troops at the front.

Soldiers said that instead of replenishing and rebuilding battle-proven brigades in a sustained way, reinforcements had been pulled from various units piecemeal to plug gaps in defenses. That has undermined cohesion, communications and morale, the soldiers said.

“All of this is an emotional action within a collapsing system,” said Taras Chmut, a former military officer and the head of Come Back Alive, a charity that supports the Ukrainian military.

“You extinguish one part of the house, then go to another, and it’s already burning again,” he said. “And you don’t change anything fundamentally.”

Those concerns were echoed by dozens of soldiers and commanders in interviews during repeated visits to the front recently and in interviews conducted by phone over the past week.

In response to concerns over military management, President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday announced the creation of a new ombudsman to attend to the concerns of soldiers.

“It is very important that each of our military feel that it is really possible to ask for support and receive it,” he said.

Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, has also vowed to address issues raised by soldiers, including improvements in basic training standards.

At the end of November, General Syrsky also named a new commander of ground forces, Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, who is well regarded both inside and outside Ukraine.

Russia has seized around 1,300 square miles of land in 2024, its fastest gains since the first months of the war but that amounts to less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory. More broadly, the Kremlin now controls substantially less territory than it did in the first months of its invasion.

While Russian forces churn a destructive path through small villages in the southern Donbas region, they have yet to show themselves capable of achieving large-scale breakthroughs.

Still, Ukrainian soldiers said they were worried about the current trajectory.

“The war is far from over,” said Major Taras of the 68th Jaeger Brigade, who recently spent three months at home recovering from an injury. “There’s this impression that everyone is already talking about peace, waiting for it to come soon,” he said. “But in reality, the fighting continues. Every day, lives are being lost — our soldiers’ lives.”

Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Arijeta Lajka from New York.

Days before setting off on a vacation from which he would never return, Oh Jaejin’s father had been overjoyed at the prospect of becoming a grandfather after Mr. Oh told him that his wife was pregnant.

“He said he was about to cry,” said Mr. Oh, 37, tears welling as he recalled his father’s response to the news earlier this month. On Sunday, Mr. Oh’s father was killed along with 178 other people when the plane they were on, Jeju Air Flight 7C2216, left Bangkok and crash-landed at an airport in southwestern South Korea.

The accident, the world’s deadliest plane crash in recent years, turned the airport in Muan County into a place of colossal grief and shock for the hundreds of victims’ relatives who had rushed there. On Tuesday, that sadness swelled as officials slowly led families to a temporary morgue set up at the airport hangar, outside the terminal, to identify bodies that had been recovered from the charred and mangled wreckage.

The work of piecing together hundreds of body parts has been painstaking, but the authorities said that by Tuesday morning 170 bodies had been identified, and four were turned over to their families. The crash was so devastating that only two people onboard survived — crew members who have since been hospitalized in Seoul. At the Muan airport, a memorial altar was being set up on the first floor on Tuesday for relatives and visitors to lay flowers.

The victims included toddlers and grandparents, entire families, groups of friends and couples. To those who waited anxiously at the airport this week, they were their sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and children.

Many of the relatives lived close by. People in the coastal region have traditionally fished or farmed rice, though many have also worked in petrochemical, steel and shipbuilding plants since the country modernized in the 1960s.

South Jeolla Province — which is home to the airport, the only international airport in the region — has the oldest population in the country, with many young people moving to Seoul for better job opportunities.

One man said that he had lost his nephew who had traveled to Thailand with his whole family, including his wife, two children and mother-in-law. Another said that he had lost both of his parents.

Mr. Oh’s father, who was 64, had been on vacation in Bangkok with seven childhood friends from Mokpo, a nearby city. In recent years, he often played golf with them in their free time, Mr. Oh said.

Mr. Oh had last seen his father, who owned a small store near Mokpo, on Christmas when he and his wife brought him some kimchi. He had told his father just this month that his wife was expecting, and that the baby would be a girl. Mr. Oh’s father was last in touch with his family when Mr. Oh’s mother messaged him to check on him on Saturday night. He had responded that it was too loud where he was and couldn’t speak on the phone.

Mr. Oh, a bank teller also in Mokpo, said that his father had not even told him that he was going to Thailand, because he had not wanted his children to worry. He learned that his father was on the doomed flight only after the crash, when his father’s friends called to tell him. Mr. Oh jumped in his car with his wife and drove to the airport. As he got close, he could see the tail of the aircraft sticking out in the horizon.

His mother, who arrived separately, was initially in denial. “Is this real?” he recalled her saying. “I can’t believe what’s happening.” But the reality slowly sank in, and it shattered her.

Officials confirmed on Sunday night that Mr. Oh’s father was among the dead.

But confusion followed, Mr. Oh said. Transportation officials arranged shuttles to take the families of the victims whose identities had been confirmed from the terminal to the temporary morgue in the hangar. Mr. Oh arrived around midnight, anxious to see his father’s body, and was told to wait for his turn.

Hours later, officials turned him away, saying they had made a mistake: The bodies were not ready for viewing. He returned home around 6 a.m.

On his second drive to the airport, after an hour of sleep, he noticed bodies scattered on the tarmac near the aircraft’s tail. Officials finally allowed him to return to the morgue later that day.

“I was very worried — I heard that a lot of the bodies were charred,” he said. “When I finally saw him, I was able to recognize his upper body, and he was fine.”

He asked the officials about the rest of his body. They told him that it was elsewhere but recoverable. He said that gave him some measure of relief.

“It looked like it was probably an instant death,” he said.

Later that day, Mr. Oh was told that it could take up to 10 days for all of the victims’ bodies to be ready to be returned to their families. That clarity helped, he said. “It felt better to know how much longer things might take rather than having to wait endlessly,” he said.

As he waited, Mr. Oh tried to handle his father’s affairs. He would have to close his father’s store. He was examining his assets and debts. He said he wondered how he would cremate his father when there were so many victims but so few crematories.

He was also planning out his father’s funeral, which has been delayed. In South Korea, funerals typically take place right after the person’s death and last three days. He had to try to inform all of his father’s friends and acquaintances ahead of time, but didn’t have access to his father’s cellphone contacts. He was taking time off from his job as a bank teller at a local agricultural cooperative.

“I’m not sure how I’ll keep smiling at the customers at my job when everything’s over and I get back to work,” he said. “People are going to ask if I’m OK, and I’m going to have to say I’m fine.”

Mr. Oh also said that Thursday was the annual memorial for his grandfather’s death and his mother’s birthday was this weekend. His wife was expected to give birth in July.

“Only good things were coming,” he said. “But my dad is gone.”

Mr. Oh said he planned to drive every day to the airport from his home in Mokpo, as if it were his daily commute, until he had his father’s remains.

“I want my father back as soon as he’s ready,” he said.

Trucks, buses and cars rumbled overhead, drowning out Marcus Azevedo’s voice. In the distance, sirens blared and exhaust pipes backfired. From under a highway overpass, Mr. Azevedo, a dance teacher, shouted over the noise, “Five, six, seven, eight!”

He hit play on his phone, and the first song started blasting from a pair of crackling speakers. Six rows of dancers began shuffling, twisting and popping their hips in unison. The playlist? All R&B classics, from Donell Jones and JoJo to Destiny’s Child and TLC.

The dance routine wouldn’t have been out of place in New York City or Atlanta or Los Angeles. But we were on the decaying fringes of Rio de Janeiro, a metropolis better known for samba. And this dance is called charme, a style born here in the 1970s as an ode to American soul, funk and, later, R&B.

This spot, in the working-class suburb of Madureira, has become a temple for lovers of charme over the decades. By day, it’s where many hone their moves. Once mastered, the steps are flaunted at nighttime parties known as “baile charme.”

“This is a magical place,” said Mr. Azevedo, 46, who began dancing charme — Portuguese for charm — when he was 11 and now leads a dance company focused on the style. “There is something spiritual, an energy that can only be found here.”

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Upon learning that Syria’s dynastic dictatorship had fallen, Iman Mohammed, a Syrian refugee living in Germany, felt a surge of elation at the idea that she could return to her homeland.

But that joy quickly faltered as another thought occurred to her: Going back to Syria could mean giving up everything that she and her family had built in Germany since making the dangerous trek to arrive there nearly a decade ago.

“In the cold light of day, when we really looked at everything that had happened, we realized, not just yet,” Ms. Mohammed, 41, said of the idea that her family might permanently return to Syria.

The decision may not be hers.

After rebel groups toppled President Bashar al-Assad’s government on Dec. 8, the prospect of returning home opened for the first time in more than a decade for the many Syrians who fled during the civil war that ravaged the country, including 1.3 million in Germany.

Many of them worked hard and overcame immense challenges to improve their circumstances. Some, like Ms. Mohammed, are not keen to give up their new lives.

It is European governments that will have the final word on whether the refugees are allowed to stay.

Within a day of the rebel victory, far-right and even some mainstream politicians in Germany began floating chartering planes to Syria and giving 1,000 euros, just more than $1,000, to any Syrian refugee willing to return permanently.

Other European countries with Syrian populations have made similar suggestions. Denmark is already offering a repatriation package of roughly €20,000 to any Syrian refugee willing to go back home and has suggested that it could double that amount to attract more interest. Austria has already sent letters to Syrians who have been in the country for less than five years, asking them to detail the reasons they are seeking asylum now that the situation in Syria has changed.

So far, Germany has not taken steps to review the asylum status of Syrian refugees, and the European Union has advised member states against rushing to deport people, stressing that the peace in Syria is fragile and that its future is uncertain.

“The situation is still volatile altogether,” Magnus Brunner, the European Union’s migration commissioner, told reporters in Brussels on Dec. 13.

Many Syrian refugees are still apprehensive about the nature of the conversations that have begun so soon after Syria’s civil war ended.

“It is very uncomfortable,” said Sulaiman Abdullah, a journalist who fled Syria more than a decade ago. “We are not some people who just arrived in Germany. We have lived here for 10 to 12 years. We are part of the society.”

Syrians make up one of the largest refugee populations in Germany, and they have become an integral part of the country’s work force. Many run their own businesses. Some work in the service sector or as drivers, delivery people or in warehouses. Others account for a significant share of the doctors and other medical specialists working in the country, and officials have warned of dire consequences for the already strained German health care system if they were all to pick up and leave.

Those Syrians who have learned the language, taken on jobs and made lives for themselves in Germany have felt disappointed in and humiliated by the swiftness of discussions about their status in the country.

“We had not really finished celebrating when the politicians first started talking about our return,” said Anas Modamani, 27, who became the face of the 2015-2016 migrant arrivals after taking a selfie with Angela Merkel, the chancellor at the time.

Even before the collapse of the Assad government, Ms. Mohammed had spent days in tears, worrying about the visas for her two oldest children. The authorities had refused to recognize their newly printed Syrian passports, needed for them to renew their residency permits.

The problem, one of the many the family has encountered over the years, has not yet been resolved. Ms. Mohammed is hopeful that her husband, Baha Mefleh, will soon receive a German passport — he has an appointment to submit his application next year — which would allow the whole family to stay in the country.

Mr. Mefleh shares his wife’s nervousness over Germany’s uncertain position on Syrian refugees, but he still holds out hope that one day he can return to his homeland. He would happily trade the family’s home in Gross Schönebeck, a village of 1,400 people about an hour outside Berlin, for the chance to go back to his old life in Daraa, Syria.

When Islamist militants first arrived there, Mr. Mefleh was forced to give up his job as a photographer specializing in weddings, leaving behind all of his equipment and a business he had built up over years.

“I would love to go back,” he said, looking sheepishly at his wife. “But, the children.”

They were the reason the family decided to leave. After four years of near misses with bombs, Ms. Mohammed decided she did not want to see one of her own among the maimed or dead boys and girls in the streets.

She hopes one day that the family will even be able to buy the two-story duplex in Germany that they now call home, with its wood-burning stove in a cozy living room and a garden in the backyard where they grow cucumbers and zucchini from Syrian seeds.

Their two oldest children have already graduated high school and are enrolled in vocational school. One is studying to become an optometrist, the other a hearing aid specialist, with the aim of opening a business together in the area. The younger two, who still have nightmares from the four months they spent crossing southeastern Europe on foot, are in high school.

Although they long to meet the cousins whom they know only through video calls, Syria has become a foreign country for them, and neither of their parents would consider uprooting them once again.

Dr. Hiba Alnayef, an assistant pediatrician in a town 40 miles west of Berlin, said she would also be reluctant to take her young children out of Germany, where they were born, to live in Syria. She wants to stay, despite the hate and discrimination that she says she has faced since arriving in 2016.

“I have experienced racism in my job, from the people around me and even from my neighbors, not all, but some of them,” Dr. Alnayef said. She once felt so threatened by a neighbor who was upset that her toddler had touched his Mercedes-Benz that she called the police.

She has also fought a surge of guilt, seeing people suffering in Syria and knowing that she has skills that her homeland desperately needs. But for her children’s futures, she is determined to stay in Germany.

In an effort to help her homeland from afar, Dr. Alnayef has set up social media pages in Arabic, where she answers questions and offers advice to her 92,000 followers about nutrition, treating minor illnesses or filling out German medical documents.

“Right now, we need to build bridges,” she said. “We need to work together to support the people in Syria.”

Jenny Gross contributed reporting from Brussels.