President Emmanuel Macron of France struck a chummy tone with President Trump even as he corrected him with a smile in Washington on Monday. That one-two punch of flattery and gentle resistance is an example of how some European leaders are trying to approach America at a fraught moment.

The question is whether it will work.

Mr. Macron called Mr. Trump “Dear Donald” four times during a joint news conference on Monday, while emphasizing the shared history between France and the United States — and underscoring that the two leaders had made progress in discussing a sustainable and strong peace agreement for Ukraine.

But even as he stuck to the script and emphasized shared goals and values, Mr. Macron showed himself willing to push back.

When Mr. Trump claimed in the Oval Office that Europe would “get their money back” because of the way they have funded support for Ukraine, Mr. Macron interjected, in a friendly tone, saying, “We provided real money.” Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Macron clearly labeled Russia as Ukraine’s aggressor. And later, in an interview with Fox News’s “Special Report” before returning to France, Mr. Macron mildly criticized threats to slap tariffs on European consumer goods as counterproductive. “How do you want us to increase security and defense expenditures if we are in a trade war?” he asked.

Europe faces a towering challenge as the full-scale war in Ukraine enters its fourth year and American support for the conflict — and for the continent as a whole — wavers.

Mr. Macron’s trip was part of a flurry of European diplomacy this week in Washington, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain expected to meet Mr. Trump on Thursday, and the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, making the rounds with administration officials.

Mr. Macron is poised to debrief European heads of state on Wednesday about his visit with Mr. Trump. Mr. Starmer will meet with a group of leaders in London on Sunday, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said on Tuesday.

That same day, Britain announced an increase in military spending; British and European leaders are increasingly talking about defense jointly, as both groups recognize that they may need to step into whatever void America leaves.

E.U. leaders will have a special summit on March 6 about supporting Ukraine and strengthening Europe’s defense, one which leaders have promised will center on more detailed plans.

Even as they chart their own path ahead, European officials are desperate to keep the United States engaged and active. American military capabilities and funding have been critical to supporting Ukraine’s resistance, and the United States is a key trading partner for the 27-member European Union. A deterioration in the trans-Atlantic relationship is in neither’s interest, E.U. leaders often emphasize.

America’s tonal shift has been so sudden and stark that it has left Europe on the defensive. Mr. Trump has spent recent days and weeks sharply criticizing European allies while making increasingly friendly overtures toward Russia. Among his complaints, Mr. Trump has long insisted that European nations spend more on their own security — a message that Mr. Macron is particularly comfortable delivering.

The French president has for years called for Europe to have more “strategic autonomy” and less military dependence on the United States — often to skepticism from some of France’s neighbors. He underscored it again with Mr. Trump.

“Everyone in Europe is now clear that it is our duty as Europeans” to shoulder more of the continent’s security burden, Mr. Macron said in Washington. “Europeans are now ready to do a lot more.”

Mr. Macron said that Europeans could send troops as part of a future peace deal in Ukraine — not on the front lines of a conflict, but as a peacekeeping force — and that the United States would act in “solidarity” to support that approach.

There were few details about how the United States would do so. And if it became necessary, it would take lots of troops, money and time for Europe to develop the capabilities needed to support Ukraine and defend itself independently. That helps to explain why officials are softly urging the United States to remain engaged, and why they are reminding American officials that doing so is in Washington’s own interest.

“Autocrats around the world are watching very closely whether there is any impunity if you invade your neighbor and violate international borders,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Monday.

“This is not only paramount for Europe,” she added. “It is also important for Asia, for Africa, and both sides of the Atlantic.”

It is also not clear whether Mr. Macron and other European leaders can influence Mr. Trump on Ukraine as the American leader embraces President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and redefines that relationship. The statements and actions emerging from Washington have left European officials concerned that Mr. Trump will negotiate a rapid peace agreement with Russia without including Ukrainian and other European leaders, laying the groundwork for a truce that leaves Kyiv vulnerable and emboldens Mr. Putin. That in turn, the Europeans fear, would leave other nations on the continent at risk of future invasion.

On the surface, Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron were all broad smiles and firm handshakes during the French president’s visit. They addressed each other as close friends, reminisced about past meetings — including a Bastille Day gathering in 2017 and Notre-Dame Cathedral’s reopening last year — and played up a centuries-old Franco-American alliance.

“The United States and France always stand on the same side, the right side, I would say, of history,” Mr. Macron said. “This is what is at stake today.”

He was careful not to antagonize Mr. Trump directly and repeatedly put a positive spin on the American leader’s latest overtures to Russia.

Mr. Macron — criticized himself in the early stages of the war for outreach to Mr. Putin, before taking a harder line — called discussions with Russia “useful.” He even framed U.S.-Ukraine discussions over a mineral deal as a great sign, telling Fox News in an interview that it was “one of the best ways” to ensure the United States was committed to “Ukrainian sovereignty.”

Behind the united calls for peace, though, were starkly divergent views on how to obtain it. Mr. Trump suggested, “We could end it within weeks, if we’re smart.” Mr. Macron repeatedly hammered his own message: Don’t rush.

Peace cannot mean Ukraine’s “capitulation,” Mr. Macron said, adding that Ukraine should not be pushed into a lopsided cease-fire without security guarantees to deter future Russian aggression.

As a cautionary tale, Mr. Macron repeatedly mentioned the 2014 and 2015 cease-fire agreements, known as the Minsk Accords, that were forged after Russian-backed separatists attacked and grabbed territory in eastern Ukraine. Those deals failed to prevent Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“It was violated every time by Russia, and we didn’t react, all of us,” Mr. Macron said.

In France, the camaraderie between the two men was seen as a surface-level display that did little to paper over the growing rift in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Libération, a left-leaning daily, said that “behind the outward smiles” of the leaders, “a wall is rising” between Europe and the United States. Le Figaro, a conservative daily, noted that Mr. Macron had not received any “firm assurances” from Mr. Trump of continued American support.

Le Monde, one of France’s leading newspapers, declared in an editorial that when it comes to reasoning with Mr. Trump, “hope is slim,” and that Europe may need to “get battle ready.”

Three and a half decades after reunification, a line runs through Germany where the Iron Curtain once stood. Instead of barbed wires and dogs, that line now divides Germans by measures like income and unemployment — and increasingly by the willingness to vote for extremist parties.

If East Germany were still its own country, the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which has been linked to neo-Nazis and is being monitored by domestic intelligence, would have scored a convincing win in the elections on Sunday, with nearly one in three voters there casting ballots for it.

Only two of 48 voting districts outside of Berlin in the former East Germany were not won by the AfD. In a handful of districts in the east, the AfD got nearly 50 percent of the vote.

That division — and the sense that Germans still to some degree inhabit two separate worlds, east and west — has become a persistent feature of Germans’ voting habits. It is one that was manifest not only on Sunday but also when Germans voted in elections for the European Parliament last June.

The divide, analysts say, reflects not only a failure to fully integrate the east, but also its unique problems and culture, shaped by decades of Communist rule during the Cold War and close alignment with Moscow and the former Soviet bloc.

“One important aspect of this is that many East Germans have never really connected emotionally or mentally with West German democracy,” said Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist who studies eastern Germany.

On top of that, many of the metrics where eastern Germany still lags behind the western part are the very factors that make voters more likely to vote for the far right, Mr. Höhne said. The AfD also has close links to Moscow.

On Sunday, only 42 percent of Germans in the east voted for traditional West German parties, including the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, which look likely to form a governing coalition.

The rest voted either for the AfD, Die Linke, which itself is a successor of the old Socialist Party that ran the East for nearly four decades, and a small splinter party run by a former Communist.

“The old western parties were never that well established in East Germany,” said Matthias Quent, a sociologist professor who has spent years studying the extreme right.

In the former East, the AfD is increasingly visible. Many members are active in civil society — including several mayors — which means even people who do not vote for the party come in regular contact with it, Professor Quent said.

“East Germany simply works differently and has not become more like the rest of the country either,” he said.

Given that East Germans were not allowed to vote freely for four decades before 1990, it is perhaps unsurprising that they do not feel the same attachment to western parties, experts say.

On top of that, parties called the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats or Liberal Democrats — like those in the West — existed in the old East Germany, but were not actual opposition parties because they were controlled by the communist regime.

It’s a narrative that allows the AfD to claim that it is the only real alternative to mainstream politics.

The result on Sunday was not a surprise. The vote tally in the east mirrored state elections in three eastern races in September.

In Thuringia, where Björn Höcke, who has been fined by a court for recycling Nazi language, runs the party, 33 percent voted for the AfD in September. The mainstream Christian Democrats came in a distant second place with about 24 percent of the vote.

However, when compared to neighboring countries, the more unusual part of the country is maybe the west, not the east.

“By European standards, the party landscape in eastern Germany is more the norm, while western Germany, with its still relatively stable mainstream parties, is actually the exception,” Professor Höhne said.

It is a problem not lost on mainstream politicians in Berlin, who see their support eroding in the east and worry that it could be a harbinger of what’s to come for the whole of Germany.

Friedrich Merz, the presumptive future chancellor of a center-right government, acknowledged the severity of the lopsidedness of German voting habits when he spoke to reporters a day after winning the national vote.

“We are extremely concerned about what is happening in the east,” Mr. Merz said.

To bolster the fortunes of mainstream parties, Mr. Merz plans to address problems both with irregular migration, which has been the AfD’s favorite issue, and with economics, as Germany struggles to improve competitiveness.

“We have to work together to solve the problems in Germany to gradually deprive this party of its fertile ground,” he said of the AfD.

Mr. Merz would be the first Christian Democratic chancellor since Angela Merkel, who was the first and so far only chancellor raised in East Germany.

And while the two parts of the country have become more integrated, high-level politics have not. Of the 17 government ministers in the departing cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, two were born in East Germany — and there might be even fewer in Mr. Merz’s.

Britain on Tuesday announced a landmark increase in military spending, seeking to send a powerful signal about burden sharing to President Trump before Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets him at the White House on Thursday.

Speaking to Parliament, Mr. Starmer said Britain would raise its military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic value by 2027, and to 3 percent by the end of the next government’s term, which would mean by 2034 at the latest. Britain, he said, would finance the massive new expenditure by scaling back spending on development.

The Labour government had previously promised to raise expenditure to 2.5 percent of economic output, from a current level of 2.3 percent, but had not given a date by which it would do so. The move would amount to an increase in expenditure of 13.4 billion pounds ($17 billion) a year on defense between now and 2027.

“We must change our national security posture because a generational challenge demands a generational response,” Mr. Starmer said.

Mr. Starmer said the change would be funded by cutting overseas development aid from 0.5 percent of gross domestic product to 0.3 percent, adding that he regretted the reduction. “At times like this, the defense and security of the British people must always come first,” he said.

Mr. Trump has long demanded that European allies contribute more to Europe’s defense. NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, recently called on NATO members to spend “considerably more” than 3 percent of economic output on defense.

Mr. Starmer reiterated the centrality of NATO and the trans-Atlantic alliance to Europe’s security. That drew a distinction with the likely new chancellor of Germany, Friedrich Merz, who said after his party’s election victory on Sunday that Europe would have to stake out a security strategy independent of the United States.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Vatican City is an anxious place. Clergy keep their phones by their pillows. Reporters, crammed in the Holy See press office, open emails with trepidation. Faithful have begun to gather expectantly in St. Peter’s Square.

All await terse bulletins from the Vatican on the condition of Pope Francis, who remains critical after being taken to a hospital 11 days ago with bronchitis that developed into pneumonia in both lungs. On Monday afternoon, hours before the Vatican reported a “slight improvement,” the phones of Vatican officials buzzed with texts falsely reporting Francis’ death.

Francis, who now has the beginnings of kidney failure and infections, may yet recover, though the prognosis is not promising, doctors say. For veterans of papal transitions, the daily health bulletins, the influx of global media, the rampant speculation and the special prayer services have a familiar and ominous feel.

“These are delicate moments,” said Duban Corredor, a 27-year-old seminarian from Colombia, who came to St. Peter’s Square on Monday night to pray the rosary for Francis, who he noted had always concluded his conversations and remarks with an appeal to “pray for me.”

The seminarian said he had assisted Francis during a Christmas Eve prayer service and saw him deeply tired, but also at peace. “I don’t think it will be long — I think he’s preparing for a moment of tranquillity, knowing that this is the end of his life.”

On a damp Monday evening, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s second-in-command, who is a fixture in the increasing speculation about who might replace Francis, led cardinals, bishops and a few thousand faithful in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in a rosary prayer for the pope’s health.

Under an intermittent drizzle, the cardinal knelt before a portrait of the Madonna and child and addressed the crowd, made up largely of priests, nuns and pilgrims.

“For 2,000 years the Christian people have prayed for the pope when he was in danger or sick,” said Cardinal Parolin, adding that now the time had come to pray for Francis “in this moment of illness and trial.”

Francis is the 266th pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church, and for much of the church’s history, especially when the papacy acted as a monarchy directly and indirectly governing large swaths of land, the death of a pope could transform the fortunes of powerful aristocrats, change the direction of a powerful state, or even determine where the church had its headquarters.

“The upheaval that follows the death of the pope today is incomparably different from what might have happened” centuries ago, said Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a church historian. He said that in some cases a pope’s death would be kept a secret, for fear that a papal entourage, or at times even the population of Rome, might ransack the Apostolic Palace. “A papal death provoked all sorts of problems.”

In the modern era, long after the pope lost his temporal powers, transitions have run more smoothly. Now a change at the top, while having great consequence for the priorities, vision and ideological complexion of the church, is unlikely to have much geopolitical impact. Still, the last days of a pope attract pilgrims, and news media, from all over the world to Rome, and they focus the faithful’s attention on their spiritual leader.

Cardinals said the rosary before the passing of Pope John XXIII in 1963. It was during a similar prayer session in St. Peter’s Square in 2005 that Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, then the under secretary of state for the Vatican, announced the death of Pope John Paul II after his final days of agony.

The once vigorous Polish pope had long suffered from Parkinson’s disease: He had lost his ability to speak clearly and often appeared hunched and ailing. His failing health had been a subject of morbid attention for years.

“It was so weird,” said Father Paul Alger, a 42-year-old priest from Augusta, Ga., who studied theology in Rome and recalled those years as a perennial papal death watch.

Francis, who initially speculated that he would have a short pontificate, has instead led the church for a dozen eventful and busy years. For the first years, he crisscrossed the globe, met with world leaders and played an active role in championing the issues he cared most about, especially on behalf of migrants and the marginalized.

But a bad knee and sciatica began to physically slow Francis down more recently. He began to depend on a cane and a walker and then a wheelchair.

Francis had colon surgery in 2021 and was operated on again two years later for a hernia that developed because of that surgery. Throughout, he kept up a demanding schedule, but his breathing became belabored, as he struggled with respiratory infections and now an explosion of pneumonia and infections that has put him in critical condition.

The faithful and clerics in attendance on Monday preferred to focus on Francis’ life rather than what seemed the end of it. Bishop Manuel Nin, the apostolic exarch to the Greek Byzantine Catholic Church, called it “unhealthy” to fixate on something that was ultimately “in God’s hands.”

But some clerics worried this latest downturn could be Francis’ last.

“They say he had a good night, he is resting, but at the same time it is clear his prognosis is not good,” said Bishop Earl Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio, who also attended the rosary in St. Peter’s Square. “It’s the beginning of the end.”

Bishop Fernandes, who said he follows “the news about the pope in multiple languages every day,” speculated that even if Francis were to get better, it would be harder for him to be around people, something Francis “always loved,” he said.

“That itself would kill him,” the bishop added.

A solemnity pervaded St. Peter’s Square, rain slicked the cobbled stones and the faithful chanted invocations to the Virgin Mary. A pair of swooping gulls cawed. In the surrounding palaces, private speculation about who might replace Francis began, ideological camps taking shape. But the event provided a public forum for the church’s leaders, of all political persuasions, to rally around the pope in his time of need.

Among the cardinals beside Cardinal Parolin on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica on Monday evening were prelates who often appeared on short lists to replace Francis, including Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines. But there were also cardinals with whom Francis has clashed for a decade, including the American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the de facto leader of the opposition to the pope’s agenda.

“When someone is dying, all that is said and done,” Father Alger said, comparing the church to a family that rallies around a dying father no matter the divisions at home. “He is the Holy Father and he is in trouble. Death has a way of making clear what matters.”

Taiwanese authorities said they had detained a cargo ship crewed by Chinese nationals, which investigators believe may have severed an undersea communications cable near the island on Tuesday. It was the latest in a series of murky incidents that have prompted theories that China and Russia may be turning to cable sabotage as a form of harassment at sea.

The cable that was damaged connected Taiwan to the Penghu Islands, which belong to Taiwan and lie about 30 miles west of the main island. Taiwan’s Coast Guard said that it was still investigating the latest incident and had not reached any conclusions about whether the severing was deliberate or accidental.

But Ou Yu-fei, a press officer for the coast guard, said initial clues pointed to the detained ship, a dilapidated cargo carrier that used more than one name, including “Hong Tai 58.” The ship had Chinese funding, the coast guard said in a statement.

“This was the only vessel in the area — that’s our judgment,” Mr. Ou said in a telephone interview, citing radar records of where the cable break occurred. “We’re not ruling out the possibility that it was engaged in an act of sabotage. We go by the evidence. It’s too early to reach conclusions.”

Mr. Ou added that the ship may have used a false registration number and appeared to have suddenly had its name changed, among other details.

The ship may have severed the cable — accidentally or deliberately — around the time that a Chinese coast guard ship warned it to leave the vicinity in the early hours of Tuesday, he said. “It is possible that it used the time when it was leaving to carry out sabotage,” he said.

The cable that was broken is one of several connecting the Penghu Islands, also called Pescadores, to the main island. Communications were quickly rerouted after the damage was detected, and there was no major outage, the authorities said.

Taiwan usually depends on undersea cables for its internet connections with outlying islands, such as the Penghu Islands, as well as for its connections to the rest of the world. Cables can be severed by natural factors like earthquakes or aging, but the most common cause is when ships drag anchors or fishing equipment that scrapes the sea floor.

Recent incidents off Taiwan and in the Baltic Sea have raised suspicions among some officials and experts that China and Russia may sometimes deploy commercial cargo ships or oil tankers to deliberately cut cables by dragging their anchors.

Two years ago, a cable between Taiwan and Matsu Island was severed. Earlier this year, a digital cable connecting Taiwan with South Korea, Japan, China and the United States was damaged, and Taiwanese authorities said that a Chinese ship may have dragged its anchor across the cable, either accidentally or deliberately. In November, two fiber-optic cables under the Baltic Sea were severed, and countries in that region have been investigating a Chinese-flagged commercial ship that may have been involved.

In January, two cables between Taiwan and Matsu suffered damage, but officials quickly said that the cause was natural deterioration of the cables.

Since those incidents, Taiwan’s government has stepped up monitoring of its subsea cables. The ship suspected of involvement in the latest severing had been watched by Taiwan’s Coast Guard since Saturday, partly because it seemed to be lingering in areas with undersea cables off Taiwan’s southern coast, said Mr. Ou, the press officer.

At about 2:30 a.m., a Taiwanese coast guard patrol ship that was in the cargo carrier’s vicinity — about seven miles out of a port — moved in closer and ordered it to leave, because it was too near an area with undersea cables and had its anchor down, Kuan Bi-ling, the minister of Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council said in an online statement.

Over half an hour later, the ship pulled up its anchor and began moving, Ms. Kuan said. But at 3:24 a.m., the coast guard received a report that the cable had been cut, and brought the ship into port, where it is being investigated. The coast guard said that it has also sent the case to prosecutors for additional inquiries.

As the commander of a rebel group allied with Al Qaeda during Syria’s long civil war, the man known by his nom du guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, welcomed foreign jihadists, dispatched suicide bombers to blow up military posts and vowed to create an Islamic state.

A decade ago, he told a journalist that Muslims should not enter Parliament to swear on a man-made constitution because they had to respect “the rule of God Almighty.”

The same commander became Syria’s new president after a rebel alliance he led ousted the strongman Bashar al-Assad in December. He broke with Al Qaeda years ago and now goes by his real name, Ahmed al-Shara. He has swapped his military fatigues for suits and has embarked on a charm offensive to convince foreign leaders and his fellow Syrians that he can repair his shattered country and lead it toward democracy — or something like it.

“If democracy means that the people decide who will rule them and who represents them in the Parliament, then, yes, Syria is going in this direction,” he told The Economist in an interview published this month.

The sharp contrast between Mr. al-Shara’s jihadist past and his pragmatic, nationalistic present has left Syrians and foreign officials wondering what he actually believes and how he will govern a critical country in the heart of the Middle East.

On Tuesday, his interim government is holding a national dialogue with hundreds of attendees that organizers say seeks to build consensus around the nation’s political and economic future. But some key groups, like the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia that controls the country’s northeast, were not invited.

Many Syrians, exhausted after 13 years of civil war, saythat whatever he does will be better than the misery and destruction wrought by Mr. al-Assad. Syrian critics who distrust his Islamist approach charge that beyond his conciliatory rhetoric lies a sinister past that he has not clearly renounced.

Since he emerged as Syria’s new leader, senior Arab and Western officials have visited him in Damascus or hosted him in their capitals to press him on issues they care about, including combating Iranian influence, limiting Russia’s military presence, shutting down illegal drug exports, cracking down on violent jihadists and ensuring the rights of women and religious minorities.

Some of those officials have said privately that they are impressed with Mr. al-Shara’s inclusive messaging. But few have promised what he needs most: financial aid to bolster Syria’s economy and kick-start reconstruction, and the lifting of harsh sanctions imposed to punish Mr. al-Assad. On Monday, the European Union agreed to suspend restrictions on Syrian banks and energy and transport sectors, as well as to extend measures to facilitate humanitarian aid.

One factor hindering foreign engagement with his government is that the United States and other countries, along with the United Nations, still classify the rebel group he led, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or H.T.S., as a terrorist organization. Some countries still classify him as a terrorist, too.

Barbara A. Leaf, a senior State Department official for the Middle East during the Biden administration, was among the first U.S. officials to meet Mr. al-Shara in Damascus, the Syrian capital, in December. She said in an interview that he had clearly come prepared to hear what the United States had to say — and to respond.

“I found him to be a very methodical thinker with a strong degree of pragmatism,” Ms. Leaf said.

She said it was unclear how much his jihadist background still shaped his views as the leader of a newly liberated country desperately seeking international recognition and support.

“Either he is just a great actor or he has a kind of spongelike personality that takes on both experience and the context that is shaping the larger environment and adjusts his own thinking to it,” she said.

Mr. al-Shara faces tremendous challenges. The war killed more than 500,000 people, according to most estimates, forced millions more to flee abroad and decimated entire communities, leaving many refugees with no homes to return to.

His government is seeking to create a national army to absorb Syria’s many militias, but some are resistant to joining and control significant territory and resources like farmland and oil.

Many Syrians were widowed, orphaned, maimed or traumatized during the war, and war monitors have reported vengeance killings across the country. To salvage what he can of the state, Mr. al-Shara has called on civil servants to keep working, but salaries are meager, the economy is feeble, and electricity is limited in many homes.

Even before he was named president last month during a closed-door meeting with allied rebel leaders, Mr. al-Shara was working at home and abroad to rebrand both Syria and himself.

He has toured Syrian provinces and met with representatives from the Christian, Alawite and Druse minorities. While Islamist in outlook, his government has not banned alcohol or imposed dress codes on women.

On foreign trips, he has catered his message and attire to his hosts. To meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, he wore a green tie; to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, he wore a red one — the colors of their flags.

Many conservative Muslim men keep their wives out of public view, but Mr. al-Shara’s spouse, Latifa al-Droubi, appeared with him for the first time during a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. On a subsequent trip to Turkey, Ms. al-Droubi met with Mr. Erdogan’s wife, Emine.

He has spoken cautiously of Israel, which has occupied territory in southern Syria, calling on it to adhere to a decades-old truce along the countries’ shared frontier, and of Russia, even though its military backed Mr. al-Assad and heavily bombed rebel communities. He has lashed out at Iran, which also backed the former regime, but has said that Syria will pose no threat to its neighbors.

His contact with the Trump administration appears to have been limited. But in a recent interview for the podcast “The Rest Is Politics — Leading,” he praised President Trump for his interest in “peace building” and his “positive approach to both the Middle East and future U.S. policy in the region.”

Mr. al-Shara’s critics accuse him of telling whoever he is meeting what they want to hear while eliding his extremist background and some of his associates’ violent records.

One of the rebels who appointed him president, Ahmad al-Hayes, was a commander accused by the United States of overseeing the torture and killing of detainees, the trafficking of women and children, and ransom and extortion schemes.

Another supporter, Mohammad al-Jasim, stands accused by the United States of commanding forces who displaced residents to seize their property and kidnapped people for ransom, “likely generating tens of millions of dollars a year.”

In 2017, Mr. al-Shara’s rebel group set up a “Salvation Government” to administer territory it controlled in northwestern Syria. After Mr. al-Assad’s fall, Mr. al-Shara brought that administration to Damascus to serve as the country’s interim government until March 1, when a new government is supposed to take over. Elections cannot be held for three or four years, he has said, because Syria is in such disarray.

The current government is made up of Mr. al-Shara’s loyalists. Some members have been with him since his jihadist days, and the health minister is his brother.

Many Syrians have been horrified by videos shared on social media of the justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, presiding over the street executions in 2015 of two women for prostitution and “spreading corruption on earth.”

The media relations office of the new government did not respond to request for comment.

Extremists still influenced the government only a few months before it moved to Damascus.

Last August, hundreds of athletes gathered to kick off a local version of the Paralympic Games in northwestern Syria, and the organizers lit a giant torch. Ultraconservative clerics accused the participants of worshiping fire, a sin in Islam, and the local government suspended the games, citing “transgressions” that “violate our culture, customs and traditions.”

Fuad Sayed Issa, the founder of Violet, the group that organized the games, said in an interview that officials in the government had apologized for the cancellation but that they were afraid of what the extremists would do if they went forward.

Mr. Issa was optimistic now that the government was in Damascus and Mr. al-Shara was expressing more openness.

“We now feel that things are going better,” he said. “The leader has an open mind-set and they are taking Syria to a better place.”

Mr. al-Shara’s allegiances changed repeatedly during the war. He came to Syria from Iraq with the support of the Islamic State, but later broke with the group. He pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda before announcing a break with it, too, in 2016.

His original group, the Nusra Front, battled and allied with other rebels over the years and rebranded itself twice, becoming H.T.S. in 2017. In the years since, Mr. al-Shara has focused on governing the country’s northwest and has cracked down on extremists believed to be plotting attacks outside Syria.

Orwa Ajjoub, a doctoral candidate at Malmo University in Sweden who studies H.T.S., said Mr. al-Shara’s history suggested he was guided less by rigid convictions than by a quest for power.

“He has changed a lot, and he is genuine in this change,” Mr. Ajjoub said. “On one hand, there is a pragmatism that is encouraging and it gives you some hope. But on the other, the lengths to which he is willing to go to stay in power are scary.”