When Donald J. Trump was last president of the United States, the wealthy monarchies of the Persian Gulf had a mostly harmonious relationship with his administration. As Mr. Trump prepares to return to the White House, the leaders of those Gulf countries have generally welcomed him back.

But this time around, the Gulf states and Mr. Trump appear to be diverging on several cornerstone issues, like Israel and Iran. Differences over energy policies could also be a source of friction.

It is unlikely that there will be major tensions or ruptures with U.S. allies in the Gulf. But Mr. Trump will be encountering a region that has seen drastic shifts since Israel launched its war on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, in which the Israeli authorities say about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.

The war in Gaza, in which at least 45,000 people have been killed, according to health officials in the enclave, has rippled across the region. In Lebanon, the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah has been battered by more than a year of fighting against Israel. And in Syria, rebels toppled the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Now, while Mr. Trump is filling his cabinet with Iran hawks and staunch defenders of Israel, Gulf leaders have publicly been urging a softer stance on Iran and a tougher line on Israel.

They have also been calling on the United States to stay engaged with the region.

For now, the Trump administration has appeared eager to engage with the Gulf powerhouses of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

In December, Mr. Trump’s pick as his envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, was in the Emirati capital, Abu Dhabi, where he attended a Bitcoin conference along with Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son. He also went to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Axios reported.

Here’s a closer look at the issues facing Mr. Trump as he navigates an evolving relationship with his traditional Gulf allies.

Engagement in the Mideast

One of the clearest calls in the Gulf for Mr. Trump to avoid an isolationist agenda came from Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services.

In an open letter to the U.S. president-elect published in November in The National, an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, Prince Turki referred to an assassination attempt against Mr. Trump and expressed his belief that “God spared your life” in part so Mr. Trump could continue the work he had started in the Middle East during his first term. That mission was to bring “PEACE, with capital letters,” he wrote.

During his first term, Mr. Trump’s administration brokered the Abraham Accords, which saw several Arab countries establishing ties with Israel.

A similar message to Prince Turki was delivered a few days later by Anwar Gargash, an adviser to Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the U.A.E. president, at a conference in Abu Dhabi.

With the Gulf surrounded by an increasingly turbulent region, Mr. Gargash said, American leadership and partnership remained essential. “We need robust leadership that balances humanitarian concerns with strategic interests,” he said.

Going Harder on Israel

On Israel, the most striking shift in messaging in the Gulf has come from the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince. Speaking at an Arab League summit in Riyadh recently, Prince Mohammed for the first time called the Israeli military campaign in Gaza a “genocide.”

Just before the war in Gaza erupted in October 2023, Saudi Arabia appeared to be on the verge of forging diplomatic relations with Israel without fulfilling its longstanding precondition for doing so — the establishment of a Palestinian state. Such a deal would have reshaped the Middle East.

Under one plan, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel in exchange for stronger defense ties with the United States and American support for a civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia.

But recent statements by Prince Mohammed suggest that any deals are a long way off.

In addition to his statement referring to genocide in Gaza, he has also made it clear that Saudi Arabia will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel until a Palestinian state is created. That is still a distant prospect given strong opposition to such a state within the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“I think that the crown prince wanted to make his position clear and beyond any shadow of a doubt,” said Ali Shihabi, a Saudi businessman who is close to the kingdom’s ruling family.

The United Arab Emirates — a signatory to the Abraham Accords — has also signaled a hardened stance toward Israel.

The U.A.E. foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, told his Israeli counterpart last week that the Emirates would “spare no effort supporting Palestinians.”

Despite Saudi Arabia’s public stance on the status of a normalization deal, U.S. diplomats have indicated that the kingdom may be privately open to advancing one under a second Trump presidency — contingent upon a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and a tangible commitment by Israel toward a path to Palestinian statehood.

“All of that is ready to go if the opportunity presents itself with a cease-fire in Gaza as well as understandings on a pathway forward for the Palestinians,” the departing U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, said on Wednesday. “So, there’s tremendous opportunity there.”

Détente With Iran?

During Mr. Trump’s first term, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates championed his administration’s hawkish stance on Iran, seeing Tehran as a dangerous rival in the region.

They cheered when Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from a nuclear deal with Iran and hailed his decision to authorize the assassination of Qassim Suleimani, the general who directed Iran’s militias and proxy forces around the Middle East, in January 2020.

But the dynamics of the region have changed since Mr. Trump’s first term.

Saudi Arabia and Iran reached an accord in March 2023 that reduced tensions in the Persian Gulf and opened the door to high-level diplomatic contacts.

Bahrain, after years of tension with Iran, has made overtures to the Iranian government, with King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa saying there was “no reason to delay” the resumption of diplomatic relations. The tiny island kingdom also condemned Israel’s targeting of Iran last October, when a shadow war between the two countries broke out into the open with tit-for-tat attacks.

For Saudi Arabia, the goal is clear: to create a stable regional environment conducive to Prince Mohammed’s dream of diversifying the oil-dependent Saudi economy. For Iran, decades of economic and political isolation, compounded by rising domestic unrest, have made reconciliation with Riyadh a necessity.

There are also indications that Iran might be open to negotiating with Mr. Trump. Many former officials, pundits and newspaper editorials in Iran have openly called for the government to engage with Mr. Trump.

So far, Mr. Trump, too, appears open at least in charting a different course from the “maximum pressure” campaign of his first term. In November, Elon Musk, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, met with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Iranian officials said.

“We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible,” Mr. Trump said in September, referring to the threat of Iran’s pursuing nuclear weapons.

Possible Frictions Over Oil

While the Gulf Cooperation Council countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — appear open to Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy, they could find themselves at odds with his economic policies.

A central promise of his campaign was to bolster U.S. oil and gas production, a move that could hurt Gulf economies.

If the United States increases oil production, as Mr. Trump has pledged, producers in the Gulf would have less scope to raise output without prompting a price drop.

“Increased U.S. oil exploration and production will lower prices and jeopardize the oil-driven economies of the Gulf,” Bader al-Saif, an associate fellow at the London-based research institute Chatham House, said in a recent report.

Mr. Trump is also expected to accelerate liquefied natural gas projects, reversing President Biden’s freeze on permits and increasing U.S. exports, particularly to Europe.

Qatar, one of the largest producers of the gas alongside the United States, would most likely be most affected, but it has so far played down its concerns.

Five months after Ukrainian forces swept across the border in the first ground invasion of Russia since World War II, the two armies are engaged in some of the most furious clashes of the war there, fighting over land and leverage in the conflict.

The intensity of the battles recalls some of the worst sieges of eastern Ukraine over the past three years, including in towns like Bakhmut and Avdiivka, names that now evoke memories of mass slaughter for soldiers on both sides.

The fighting, in the Kursk region of Russia, has taken on a layer of significance for the territory’s potential to play a role in any cease-fire negotiations. Facing the prospect of an unpredictable new U.S. president — who has vowed to end the war swiftly, without clarifying the terms — Ukraine hopes to use Russian territory as a bargaining chip.

Russia, relying on North Korean reinforcements, hopes to knock that territory out of Ukraine’s grasp.

“Here, the Russians need to take this territory at any cost, and are pouring all their strength into it, while we are giving everything we have to hold it,” said Sgt. Oleksandr, 46, a leader of a Ukrainian infantry platoon. “We’re holding on, destroying, destroying, destroying — so much that it’s hard to even comprehend.”

He and other soldiers, asking to be identified by only a first name or call sign in accordance with military protocol, said that attacking North Korean infantry had made the battles far more ferocious than before.

“The situation worsened significantly when the North Koreans started arriving,” said Jr. Sgt. Oleksii, 30, a platoon leader. “They are pressuring our fronts en masse, finding weak points and breaking through them.”

Russia, with the help of an estimated 12,000 North Koreans, has retaken about half of the territory it lost over the summer. Its assaults over the past week have further eaten into the territory held by Ukraine.

But Ukrainian forces have also gone on the attack in recent days, seeking to secure an area west of Sudzha, a small town in Russia about six miles from the border that has become the anchor for Ukrainian forces, which seized about 200 square miles in August.

“If they keep pressing us and we don’t push back, the enemy will feel a sense of superiority,” said Andrii, 44, a military intelligence officer. “When someone keeps hitting you, and you don’t hit back, the attacker will feel psychologically comfortable, even relaxed.”

The Russians have largely thwarted the assault, but fighting goes on and the situation remains unpredictable, soldiers said.

The intensity of the battles could be glimpsed on the road approaching the Russian border: A steady stream of tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles rolled past broken down and blown-up equipment.

Russian bombs and rockets exploded with thunderous force in border villages, and Ukrainian missiles could be seen streaking across the sky in the opposite direction.

Tens of thousands of drones hunted targets, too. They have transformed the battlefield, although Ukraine has improved its electronic warfare abilities, limiting the effectiveness of drones that rely on radio signals. Russia has now flooded the theater with drones guided by ultrathin fiber-optic cables, with a flying range of more than 10 miles.

The best current defense against them is a shotgun, Ukrainian soldiers said.

The renewed fighting comes against a deeply uncertain political backdrop. The U.S. president-elect, Donald J. Trump, spent months on the campaign trail questioning American military assistance to Ukraine. He has said he wants to bring the war to a swift end, but has not indicated how.

Russian forces have been on the offensive for more than a year in eastern Ukraine, making steady advances despite staggering losses.

With its incursion, Ukraine aims to create a buffer zone to protect hundreds of thousands of civilians in the city of Sumy, less than 20 miles from the border with Russia. Ukraine also wants to ease pressure on the eastern front by drawing Russians back onto their own land.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the campaign had sent a powerful message to the world that Ukraine can do more than play defense.

“It’s one of our wins, I think one of the biggest wins, not just last year, but throughout the war,” Mr. Zelensky said on Thursday in Germany, while meeting representatives of nations providing military support to Ukraine.

Still, some military analysts have cautioned that Ukraine’s Kursk campaign could leave its forces increasingly stretched and losing ground in its own eastern Donbas region.

Many soldiers fighting in Kursk believe that the painful losses in eastern Ukraine would have been even worse without their campaign.

“We have to understand the Russians use their most elite soldiers and best reserves in this area,” said Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, 30, a battalion commander in the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “Considering what they could be doing in other parts of Ukraine, it is good.”

He was still bleary-eyed after a battle, a few days earlier, to thwart a large Russian assault.

The Russians attacked Ukrainian positions in six waves, employing more than 50 tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehicles.

While dozens of enemy soldiers were killed and injured and a large amount of the Russian equipment destroyed, Captain Shyrshyn said, the Russians advanced a couple of miles.

“When the first wave comes, we focus on it, deal with it, and then the next one comes,” he said. There is no time to redirect artillery or other resources as the next wave moves in from a different line of attack.

“We fall behind,” he said. “Then the next wave comes, and one of them manages to reach the required section and accomplish its task.”

It remains difficult, he said, to see how so many in the West view the war in Ukraine like a video game and refuse to see the threat Russia poses to the world.

He acknowledged the decline in Ukrainian morale over nearly three years of war, but said most soldiers still understood why they must fight. “Stopping will mean our death, that’s all,” he said.

North Korea’s entry into the war, some Ukrainian soldiers said, should alarm European nations and their allies.

The North Korean troops have fought as a disciplined, dedicated and fearless force, they said, typically moving in large formations on foot, even through minefields while under heavy artillery fire and being stalked by drones. The Ukrainian authorities on Saturday said that their forces captured two North Korean soldiers and that they were the first to be taken alive so far.

Sgt. Oleksandr, the platoon leader, said the carnage in Kursk was as terrifying as anything he had witnessed since joining the army in 2014.

“You look and can’t fully grasp where you are, seeing every day how many people we destroy,” he said.

He compared it with Bakhmut, when machine gunners had to be regularly replaced because they could not handle the pace of killing. “After two hours of laying down so many people, they couldn’t take it mentally,” he said.

“It’s the same here now,” he said, sharing a cellphone video showing the aftermath of a recent assault. The field was littered with bodies, torn and twisted and piled in ways that made it hard to count the dead.

“The worst is for the infantry,” he said. “When you’re sitting there, and they’re coming at you, and everything is flying at you.”

Anastasia Kuznietsova contributed reporting.

For six weeks, South Korea has lurched through its worst political crisis in decades, throwing the resilience of the country’s democracy into question. On Tuesday, it takes the biggest step toward a resolution, when the Constitutional Court begins deliberating whether to remove or reinstate the country’s impeached president.

The eight justices on the court will be the final arbiters on the fate of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached and suspended from office on Dec. 14 by the National Assembly for his short-lived declaration of martial law 11 days earlier.

The stakes are high. Rival groups of citizens have rallied for weeks, some in front of the court, either calling for Mr. Yoon’s ouster or demanding his return to office. Hard-liners on both sides have warned of “civil war” if the court does not rule in their favor.

If Mr. Yoon is removed, it will be another crushing blow to the country’s conservative camp: He will be the third conservative president in a row to be ousted, imprisoned or both before or after their term ended.

But if the deeply unpopular leader is allowed to return to office, it could set a precedent for future leaders to use martial law as a political tool, said Ha Sang-eung, a professor of political science at Sogang University in Seoul.

“I wonder what other democracies around the world would think of that happening in South Korea,” Mr. Ha said.

Mr. Yoon has vowed to triumph at the Constitutional Court. But his lawyers have said he will not attend the first hearing on Tuesday, citing fears that criminal investigators might try to detain him for questioning on insurrection charges if he leaves his fortified residence in central Seoul. His absence is expected to cut the Tuesday hearing short. But the court can proceed with its deliberations from the second hearing, set for Thursday — with or without him.

“President Yoon will defend himself at court as often as is necessary,” said his lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun.

Mr. Yoon’s martial law lasted only six hours after being voted down by lawmakers in the opposition-led National Assembly. But his attempt to put South Korea under military rule for the first time in four decades has unleashed a prolonged political uncertainty in a key ally of the United States, which has expressed concern over Mr. Yoon’s move.

While Mr. Yoon faces a parallel criminal investigation on charges of insurrection, the focus for resolving his presidency now shifts to the Constitutional Court: Its decision could help dispel some of that uncertainty, or it could add to the turmoil if its decision angers the public.

As the country’s political polarization has deepened in recent years, the court has handled a growing number of cases only it can settle: officials, prosecutors and judges impeached by the National Assembly. Mr. Yoon is the third South Korean president in the past two decades to be impeached.

In 2004, President Roh Moo-hyun was impeached by the National Assembly for violating election law, but he was reinstated by the court, which ruled that his offense was not serious enough. In 2017, the court ousted Park Geun-hye, another impeached president, for corruption and abuse of power.

“When the country is drifting without a skipper or without knowing who the skipper is, the Constitutional Court sets it back on course,” said Jung Ji Ung, a lawyer and president of a bar association for Gyeonggi, the populous province that surrounds Seoul.

South Korea has a separate Supreme Court, but it created the Constitutional Court in 1987 as the ultimate interpreter of its Constitution. Located in Seoul’s quiet old town, the court has often attracted rival activists holding banners and loudspeakers when it neared historic verdicts.

In 2005, it abolished a centuries-old practice of allowing children to adopt only their father’s family name. In 2009, it voted against a ban on nighttime protest rallies, allowing citizens to gather after hours to express their grievances, as they have in recent months for and against Mr. Yoon. In 2015, the court decriminalized adultery. In 2019, it struck down a 66-year-old law that made abortion a crime punishable by up to two years in prison.

As the number of impeachment cases grows, the court has become more politically important and so have its nine justices, who each serve a term of six years. Three are chosen by the president, three by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and three by the political parties.

The current court has eight justices, and one vacancy. Two were selected by Mr. Yoon and his party; three by the former and current Supreme Court chief justices; and three by Mr. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, and his Democratic Party, the current opposition.

Mr. Yoon can be removed from office if six or more justices agree he should be, but he might not be able to rely on partisanship in the court to save him. In the past, the justices have not always voted based on who backed their appointments: The court ruled unanimously to remove Ms. Park, even though some of them had been appointed by her or her party.

The court’s ruling will depend on the gravity of any constitutional and legal offenses found to be committed by Mr. Yoon, said Bang Seung-Ju, a professor at Hanyang University School of Law in Seoul. It will also weigh whether a decision not to expel him would pose a greater disadvantage to the constitutional order and national interest than would his removal, such as by furthering political instability, he said.

Prosecutors to the court are appointed by the National Assembly and say that Mr. Yoon committed insurrection when he sent armed troops into the Assembly, ordering them to seize the Parliament and detain his political enemies. Since he took office in 2022, Mr. Yoon has been locked in a standoff with the National Assembly, which he called “a den of criminals” when justifying his martial law decree.

Mr. Yoon also violated the Constitution by banning all political activities and placing the news media under military control, prosecutors say.

State prosecutors have already arrested a former defense minister and several military generals on charges of helping Mr. Yoon commit insurrection. Mr. Yoon ordered the generals to break down the doors at the National Assembly, “by shooting if necessary,” and “drag out” lawmakers, the prosecutors said.

Mr. Yoon Kab-keun, the president’s lawyer, called those testimonies “corrupted.”

But legal analysts including Noh Hee-bum, a former research judge at the Constitutional Court, expect the court to unseat Mr. Yoon as early as February, in order to help ease the country’s political uncertainty and because there is enough evidence against him.

“It’s a matter of time,” Mr. Noh said.

High-level cease-fire talks appeared to be gaining momentum on Monday as Arab and American mediators pressed for an agreement to halt the fighting in Gaza and release hostages held by Hamas before President-elect Donald J. Trump assumes office on Jan. 20.

It was still unclear whether the parties had reached a resolution on all the central disputes that have proved insurmountable in previous rounds of negotiations, but officials expressed optimism that a deal was achievable.

On Monday, President Biden suggested an agreement between Israel and Hamas was imminent. “On the war between Israel and Hamas, we’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,” he said in a foreign policy speech.

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, said there was “a distinct possibility” that Hamas and Israel could agree to a deal this week.

“The question is now can we all collectively seize the moment and make this happen,” Mr. Sullivan told Bloomberg in an interview.

Mr. Trump said during an interview with Newsmax on Monday: “We are very close to getting it done, and they have to get it done. If they don’t get it done, there’s going to be a lot of trouble out there.”

He continued, “I understand it’s — it’s it’s been — there’s been a handshake, and they’re getting it finished. And maybe by the end of the week.”

A Hamas official said in a text message that progress had been made on all issues and that a deal was possible in the coming two days as long as Israel does not change its position at the last minute.

Earlier on Monday, an Arab diplomat said “real progress” was being made in the talks, and two Israeli officials said a draft agreement was awaiting Hamas’s approval, with the next 24 hours seen as being critical.

Other Israeli officials said that the optimal conditions for an agreement had been created, making a breakthrough possible. These officials said that the emerging agreement would allow Israel to maintain a buffer zone in Gaza during its implementation and that Israeli forces would not leave the territory until the release of all hostages.

They also said it would allow displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza to return to the north while unspecified “security arrangements” were enforced.

The Hamas official, the diplomat and the Israeli officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

For months, repeated rounds of talks have seen hopes rise only to be dashed days later, with Israel and Hamas each blaming the other for the impasse.

If a deal is achieved, it would bring some respite to Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured miserable conditions in displacement camps and relentless bombardments by Israel, and the families of hostages taken from Israel, who have suffered for months wondering about the fate of their loved ones.

Who are the players?

• The lead mediators in the talks are Qatar and Egypt, shuttling messages between Israel and Hamas. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, and the director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Maj. Gen. Hassan Rashad, have been the top officials representing their countries in the negotiations.

• David Barnea, the chief of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, is one of Israel’s main negotiators, alongside Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, a domestic security service, and Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon of the Israeli military. Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has also participated in important meetings related to the negotiations.

• Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official based in Doha, is the militant group’s chief negotiator and has interfaced with Qatari and Egyptian officials about the details of a possible agreement.

• The United States has used its leverage to encourage Israel and Hamas to sign on to a deal. Bill Burns, the C.I.A. director, and Brett McGurk, a senior White House official, have crisscrossed the Middle East, pressing for a breakthrough in the talks. Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, has also made trips to Qatar and Israel, meeting with top officials there.

What are they negotiating?

• Israeli officials hope to secure the release of at least some of the roughly 100 hostages who have been held in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war.

• Hamas leaders want to bring about an end to the Israeli assault, which has severely weakened the group’s armed wing and government, uprooted nearly two million people and reduced cities to rubble. Hamas officials have also said they are seeking a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of displaced people in the south of the enclave to the north, the entry of materials for reconstruction, and freedom for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. On Monday, Hamas said in a statement that Palestinian prisoners would be freed soon.

• The parties have long been discussing an agreement that would have three stages in what Arab and American officials hope will result in the end of the war. But Israeli officials said on Monday that the deal coming together could have only two phases, with negotiations about the details of the second stage commencing on the 16th day of the first stage.

What are the biggest obstacles?

• A major hurdle to the success of the talks has been the permanency of a cease-fire. While Hamas has demanded a comprehensive end to the war, Mr. Netanyahu has said he wants a “partial” deal that would allow Israel to resume the war after freeing hostages.

• Israel has been demanding vague language in the text of an agreement that leaves room for a resumption of fighting at some point, according to a Palestinian familiar with the matter and two Israeli officials. Mr. Netanyahu has feared that his right-wing coalition partners could take down his government and jeopardize his political future if he agrees to a deal that ends the war, analysts say.

• In a post on X on Monday, Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, described “the emerging deal” as “a catastrophe for the national security” of Israel and declared he would not support it.

• Hamas has not suggested that it would be willing to compromise on its demand to end the war. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, told a gathering in Algeria last week that there must be “an absolute end to the aggression.”

• Another hurdle has been how far into Gaza Israel will be allowed to carry out military operations in the first phase of an agreement. Israel had wanted the ability to maneuver up to 1.5 kilometers, or about a mile, into the enclave, the two Israeli officials and the Palestinian familiar with the matter said. Hamas had wanted any incursions limited to within 500 meters of the border, according to the Palestinian.

• The Israeli officials, however, have now been saying that the emerging agreement would allow Israel to maintain a buffer zone in Gaza during its implementation and that Israeli forces would not leave the territory until the release of all hostages.

• Israel has demanded a list from Hamas of which hostages are still alive. Without that, Israeli officials say, there can be no agreement on how many Palestinian prisoners Israel would be willing to release in exchange. As of Sunday morning, Israel had not received such a list, according to an official familiar with the matter.

• Last week, Hamas representatives indicated that the group had approved an Israeli list of 34 hostages to be released in the first stage of an agreement, but it did not specify how many of them were alive. On Wednesday, the Israeli authorities announced that the body of one of the hostages whose name appeared on the list— Youssef Ziyadne, 53, an Arab citizen of Israel — had been found in Gaza.

• On Monday, Israeli officials confirmed that the number of hostages to be released in the first stage was 33 and said their assessment was that most of them were alive.

• But Hamas has agreed to Israel’s request to include 11 contested individuals on the list of hostages to be released in the first phase of a deal. Israel classifies them as civilians, but Hamas considers them soldiers, according to the two Israeli officials and the Palestinian. Israel is weighing Hamas’s demand that the 11 be treated as soldiers who would be exchanged for a higher number of Palestinian prisoners than those released for civilian hostages.

One young soldier from North Korea said he didn’t know where he was fighting when he was sent from his isolated homeland to the frontline of the war between Russia and Ukraine. When asked whether his parents knew where he was, another North Korean soldier shook his head.

The three-minute video clip that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine posted on the social media ​platform X on Sunday showed a Ukrainian official questioning two North Korean prisoners of war with the help of a Korean interpreter. ​The Ukrainian authorities announced their capture​ on Saturday, saying they were the first North Korean troops to be taken alive. Mr. Zelensky later offered to exchange them for Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia.

The soldiers’ answers came in footage provided and edited by Ukraine, which controlled the production and release of the video. It offered a tiny, but rare, glimpse into the mind-set and preparedness of ​an estimated 11,000 North Korean troops deployed to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.

They appeared to back up what South Korean and U.S. officials have said in recent weeks: North Korean troops were taking heavy casualties in a foreign war waged in an unfamiliar territory while their government was keeping their deployment a secret to its people.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in Seoul on Monday that it estimates 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and 2,700 others wounded in battles​ against Ukraine. The White House has put the toll even higher.

​Memos found with dead North Korean soldiers indicated that their government had urged the highly indoctrinated troops to end their own lives rather than be captured​ in the battlefield, according to South Korean lawmakers who briefed journalists after a closed-door meeting with the spy agency, echoing an assertion made by Mr. Zelensky. One North Korean soldier was trying to blow himself up with a grenade, shouting the name of ​North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, when ​he was shot by Ukrainian troops, they said.

North Korea has not responded to reports of its troops captured or killed by Ukraine forces. ​It has never publicized the ​deployment ​or large shipments of ​North Korean artillery shells and other weapons​ sent to Russia to help its war against Ukraine​, although ​they marked the country’s first intervention in a major armed conflict overseas in decades.

In the video released by Mr. Zelensky, the voice of an official questioning the North Koreans was distorted, perhaps to prevent their identification, and the captured troops were clearly still wounded. Ukraine said the soldiers had received medical care and had been taken to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for interrogation. But by posting the video clip online, Ukraine also appeared to use the POWs in its messaging to the West.

The Ukrainian leader has seized the involvement of North Korean troops for Russia as a way to try and galvanize more support from allies. South Korea, too, has cited North Korea’s growing military alliance with Russia as a source for international concern.

Experts say that comments from prisoners of war should be assessed in light of the power imbalance between captors and captives, with the knowledge that the prisoners may not be speaking freely and could be motivated by their own safety concerns or a desire for good treatment.

According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a “public curiosity,” a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting.

Lying in a bed with both his hands wrapped in white bandages, one of the two North Korean POWs looked bewildered when he indicated — by nodding or shaking his head — that he didn’t know he was fighting Ukraine ​when he was captured or that he was now in Ukraine.

When he was sent to the front line on Jan. 3, he said he was only told that the North Korean troops “would train as if we were in real combat.”

“I saw my colleagues dying next to me,” he said. “I was hiding in a dugout when I got injured.”

When asked whether he wanted to return home, the soldier asked if the Ukrainians were good people. When the interpreter said yes, he said in a weak but pleading voice: “I want to live here.”

The other North Korean soldier had a bandage wrapped around his ​wounded jaw and did not speak. He nodded when he was asked whether he had parents in North Korea. But he shook his head when​ he was asked whether they knew where he was.

“​The video clip of the two soldiers shows that Kim Jong-un has not been able to find a way to justify his country’s participation in the Russia-Ukraine war to his people,” said Kang Dong-wan, an expert on North Korea at Dong-A University in South Korea. “It also showed that the North Korean troops are being wasted as cannon fodder.”

The two soldiers belonged to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North Korean military’s intelligence arm, the South Korean lawmakers told journalists in a briefing. The lawmakers said that when the soldiers were sent to the war, their government had promised to treat them as “heroes.”

The soldiers were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where North Korean forces were fighting to help Russia regain territory seized by Ukraine during a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.

​The North Korean troops were shooting at drones flying in the distance in futile attempts to destroy them, the South Korean intelligence agency told lawmakers, citing battlefield footage that it analyzed. They were also making reckless charges at their enemies without proper artillery support from the rear, it was quoted as saying.

Mr. Kim is believed to reap billions of dollars worth of oil, food and weapon technologies in return for its supply of troops and weapons to Russia, according to South Korean analysts and officials. But the troop deployment was so rushed that the ​North Korean soldiers were poorly prepared for modern warfare, especially drone attacks, they said.

On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine was “ready to hand over Kim Jong-un’s soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia.”

“For those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available. In particular, those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given that opportunity,” he added.

Professor Kang said that by exposing the face of one North Korean soldier and his wish to remain in Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities were endangering his safety should he be sent back to North Korea, where his statement would be seen as an act of betrayal.

​If any North Korean POWs wanted to defect to South Korea, the Seoul government was ready to negotiate with Kyiv, the South Korean lawmakers quoted the intelligence agency as saying.

In October, we traveled to the Cabo Delgado Province in northern Mozambique to understand how terrorists who claim an affiliation with the Islamic State have gained a foothold and wreaked havoc on Muslims and Christians alike.

Officials in the region and in the West say they are deeply concerned that if the Islamic State affiliate known as ISIS-Mozambique is not contained, then the loosely linked Islamic State network that has been gaining ground in pockets of Africa could become a bigger global threat.

What locals call “the war” has robbed the region of what was a largely peaceful life of fishing and farming.

Nearly 6,000 people have been killed and up to half of the province’s 2.3 million people have been displaced. Finding food and shelter has become a daily struggle in a province rich with natural resources like rubies, gas and timber.

Since our visit, the country has grown only more tense. After a disputed presidential election, Mozambique has been engulfed in the worst election-related violence since a long-running civil war ended in 1992. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country to protest a result that many believe was rigged by the governing party, Frelimo. Nearly 300 people have been killed during the protests, according to Decide Electoral Platform, a civil society organization.

On top of that, Cabo Delgado and Nampula province to the south took a direct hit from Cyclone Chido in mid-December, killing as many as 120 people, displacing tens of thousands, and leaving many without food and clean water.

Amid the chaos, insurgent attacks have risen sharply in Cabo Delgado, creating new uncertainty after government officials earlier had said they had largely defeated ISIS-Mozambique.

There is little doubt that the insurgency is at its weakest, diplomats and security analysts say, down to a few hundred fighters from several thousand. That is mostly because international troops, led by the Rwandan military, have picked up the slack for Mozambique’s ill-equipped and ill-trained armed forces.

But insurgents have now broken into small groups scattered across the dense forests of a province roughly the size of Austria, turning the conflict into a game of Whac-a-Mole, security experts said. Attacks are smaller than in the past. But they were more frequent in 2024 than in 2023, and have spread to previously unaffected areas.

“The government is doing the best it can,” Valige Tauabo, the governor of the province, said in an interview.

Where the Insurgency Began

Our Cessna 206 landed on an airstrip in Mocimboa da Praia, a sleepy fishing village that was the birthplace of the insurgency. A Rwandan soldier in battle gear surveilled us from the control tower.

Because of the high risk of ambushes, we had chartered a flight from the provincial capital, Pemba, a luxury few residents can afford.

We hopped into a sedan that wove around barricades set up by the Rwandan military and made our way into the village.

In October 2017, more than two dozen insurgents raided a police station in Mocimboa da Praia and killed two officers in the first attack of the insurgency.

Back then, the group called itself Al Shabab (analysts say it is unaffiliated with the Shabab in Somalia). Researchers say it had begun forming around 2005, when the teachings of extremist clerics from neighboring Tanzania to the north began infiltrating the mosques and madrassas in Cabo Delgado.

To win recruits, the extremists told the locals that while they struggled in poverty, their land was rich in natural resources. Lucrative natural gas reserves that had attracted some $24 billion in foreign investment, including nearly $5 billion from the United States, were nearby, off the coastal town of Palma.

Resentment of the government grew with multiple reports of the Mozambican military assaulting or killing civilians in Palma.

But the insurgents’ early message quickly got lost in their brutality.

In March 2020, Islamist militants gathered village residents on a soccer field in Mocimboa da Praia and warned them not to associate with the government, or “we’re going to decapitate everyone,” recalled Sanula Issa.

Only a couple of weeks later, Ms. Issa said, she was startled awake early one morning by gunfire and shouts of, “Allahu akbar!”

She raced to the beach with her husband and three children, she said, and tried to pile into boats with others. But the insurgents grabbed her husband and decapitated him with a machete, said Ms. Issa, 33, wiping away tears with a pink head scarf.

“They are evil,” said Ms. Issa, who once cooked rice for sailors. “They ruined people’s lives — innocent people.”

But it is not as though the locals turned to the government.

“Our dislike goes both ways,” said Rabia Muandimo Issa, who is no relation to Sanula Issa. She lost her brother and sister, and her home in Mocimboa da Praia, in an insurgent attack five years ago. “We don’t see good coming either from the government or the insurgents.”

A Displacement Crisis

For most of his 20 years, Muinde Macassari had a comfortable life in a shack near the ocean, fishing with his family. But since insurgents stormed his seaside village of Quiterajo two years ago, he has been sleeping on blankets in his aunt’s yard in Pemba, sharing a tent with two relatives.

The heat in the tattered tent becomes oppressive, and rain trickles through the torn canvas.

Hundreds of thousands of people have returned to their communities, only to find that their jobs, homes and stability are now gone.

Hundreds of thousands of others, like Mr. Macassari, live displaced in unfamiliar communities.

More than 80,000 displaced people are now crowding into Pemba, which had previously held about 200,000 residents. Aid organizations say Mozambique’s conflict does not get the assistance it needs because it is overshadowed by other global crises.

Mothers with children wrapped to their backs crowd clinics for child malnutrition treatment. Displaced people cram into the low-slung homes of family, friends and good Samaritans, using bedsheets as dividing walls.

Mr. Macassari sleeps outside because his aunt’s squat, two-bedroom concrete home is already full with 10 people.

He had been kidnapped by the insurgents, he said, forced to wash their clothes and stand guard, but says he was never sent into battle. He slept in the forest on an uncomfortable bed made of coconut tree leaves and ate just occasional portions of rice, corn and cassava.

Mr. Macassari said he understood some of the grievances the extremists preached — about the political elite riding around in fancy cars while everyone else was poor. But if the insurgents’ complaints are with the government, Mr. Macassari wondered, “why then are they killing innocent people?”

He escaped one night, using a bathroom break as an excuse, he said. He ran through the bush until he made it to a nearby village.

A Sour Homecoming

When insurgents captured Cheia Cassiano during an attack on Mocimboa da Praia in early 2020, they offered him a choice: You can join us, or we can kill you.

Over the next year, Mr. Cassiano, now 37, said the insurgents forced him to run, lift weights, fire a gun — and attack villages. They preached their message loudly: The war will not end until the end of the world; men should wear pants and women long skirts; everyone needed to pledge fealty to Islam, not the government.

“I was anxious,” Mr. Cassiano said. “Within the insurgency, when you don’t perform according to the plan, they can kill you.”

The insurgents seized control of Mocimboa da Praia in August 2020 and held it for a year, until troops from Rwanda and countries in southern Africa drove them out. It was the longest the insurgents had occupied a town over the course of the conflict.

Mocimboa da Praia emptied out during the occupation in 2020. But in 2022, residents began returning and life in many ways seems to have returned to normal. A market in the center of town buzzes at night with street vendors and growling motorcycle taxis. Fishermen gather around a sandy cove at sunrise, preparing nets and wooden boats, and drying out fish on tarps. Teams compete on dirt soccer fields.

But with just a little probing, it is easy to find deep physical and mental scars.

The steeple of the Catholic church in the center of town stands tall, but most of the building has been reduced to rubble. Next door, an elementary school is mostly gutted, with faded writing on a chalkboard reminding parents of a deadline, now years old, to enroll their children. A hospital infirmary is just a metal skeleton.

Where statues once stood of two of Mozambique’s liberation heroes, Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel, there are just broken foundations.

Many residents returned after the fighting to find empty patches of dirt where their homes made of red clay and thin logs once stood.

Mr. Cassiano, who joined the fighters after he was kidnapped, said his house had been burned down. He has rebuilt it and now sells fish for a living, but carries a visible scar of the conflict: He is missing his right hand. He said that he got into a dispute with his fellow insurgents over a bicycle he took from a village they raided. They accused him of stealing the bike from a group leader, he said, and, in accordance with their interpretation of Shariah law, chopped off his hand.

Trying to Heal

At a community center next to a displacement camp in Mocimboa da Praia, children in an art therapy workshop sometimes draw stick figures without heads, or sculpt mounds of clay into rifles.

One recent day, children sat in a circle singing, keeping the rhythm by slapping rock-filled plastic bottles on the ground.

“Children have the right to play,” they sang, “and to live as a child.”

One 12-year-old said she was only 8 when she was kidnapped by insurgents from Mocimboa da Praia and sexually assaulted multiple times while in captivity. She was once beaten for not putting on her hijab properly. She escaped into the bush with several women, and says she ate sand to stay alive.

She acted erratically when she returned home, said her aunt and uncle, whom she lives with because her parents were killed in an insurgent attack.

“I have seen people killed!” she would scream in sudden outbursts, her aunt said.

She is now back in school, and said she has begun to recover by spending time with other child survivors who gather at the center, run by the Foundation for Community Development, a local nonprofit. As we sat on the ground speaking, she stared downward, tracing the sand with a twig. The horrific things she has experienced, she said, are now motivation for her life ahead.

“I want to be a nurse,” she said, “to help other people in my community.”

Oliviero Toscani, an Italian photographer who used images of an AIDS patient and death row inmates to break the boundaries of fashion imagery as the creative mastermind of Benetton’s advertising campaigns, died on Monday. He was 82.

His death was announced by his family on Instagram. They did not say where he died or cite a cause of death, but in August Mr. Toscani told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he had been diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare and incurable condition in which there is a buildup of protein.

His shock-and-awe campaigns in the 1980s and ’90s helped turn Benetton from a small Italian brand into a global fashion powerhouse, with provocative advertisements that blurred the lines between marketing and activism, high art and consumer industry.

In one ad, an AIDS patient lay on his back, his mouth open, his hands curled on his chest. His dark eyes stared past his family, who had gathered around his deathbed. The patient, David Kirby, looked almost Christ-like.

And there, near the bottom right, a few words hung in a green box: “United Colors of Benetton.”

The advertisement, which ran in the 1990s, was one of the most provocative and divisive in recent fashion history, prompting furious debates over whether Benetton, and Mr. Toscani, were creating art, engaging in advocacy or exploiting the epidemic to sell its clothes.

Notably, Mr. Toscani had the Kirby family’s permission to use a colorized version of the image, which was shot in 1990 by the photographer Therese Frare. The Kirbys said the campaign had helped broaden awareness about AIDS.

“Benetton didn’t use us, or exploit us,” the Kirby family said, maintaining that this was a way for their son’s portrait to be “seen all over the world, and that’s exactly what David wanted.”

Mr. Toscani’s ads were often socially progressive, with images of racially diverse and gay families. They were also meant to shock. He used pictures of horses copulating. He used the bloodstained uniform of a soldier killed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. One ad featured actors dressed as a priest and a nun kissing.

“Advertising agencies make millions by repeating the same old thing,” he told The New York Times in 1995, adding, “We try to go another way.”

Mr. Toscani sometimes crossed the line even for Benetton. He joined the company in 1982 and left in 2000 amid an uproar over an ad campaign that featured photographs of death row inmates across the United States.

He returned as creative director in 2017. But his career at Benetton came to an end in 2020, not because of the calculated and daring risks he had taken in photography and advertising, in which he delighted in his broadside challenges to conventional ideas of respectability. Rather, it was because of an offhand comment he made in a radio interview about a bridge collapse in Italy in which more than 40 people died. “Who cares that a bridge collapsed?” he had said. Though he apologized, Benetton fired him.

Italian politicians and creative leaders honored him in social media tributes on Monday. The designer Valentino Garavani, the creator of Valentino, called him “a visionary who challenged the world through his lens.” The designer Giorgio Armani wrote that “the directness and visual impact of his language set a standard.”

Oliviero Toscani was born in Milan on Feb. 28, 1942. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Fedele Toscani, a photojournalist. Mr. Toscani trained at the Zurich School of Applied Arts and worked as a fashion designer before he joined the Benetton Group as art director in 1982.

His survivors include his wife, Kirsti Moseng Toscani, and their three children, Rocco, Lola and Ali. Mr. Toscani was married twice before and had three other children. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

In his final months, Mr. Toscani told the Corriere della Sera that he had lost weight while being treated for amyloidosis and that his sense of taste had declined. Wine tasted different to him, he said. “I am not interested in living like this,” he added.

But in September, he traveled to the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich for a major retrospective of his work called “Oliviero Toscani: Photography and Provocation.” It closed just over a week before he died.

“I have found out that advertising is the richest and most powerful medium existing today,” he told The Times in 1991. “So I feel responsible to do more than to say, ‘Our sweater is pretty.’”

Elisabetta Povoledo and Matthew Mpoke Bigg contributed reporting.