俄乌战争第三年，特朗普为普京开启新世界
Three Years Into War in Ukraine, Trump Ushers in New World for Putin

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia took the stage in Sochi, Russia, last fall, two days after Donald J. Trump won the U.S. presidential election, and spoke of the dawn of a new world order.
去年秋天，特朗普赢得美国总统大选两天后，俄罗斯总统普京在俄罗斯索契登台演讲，谈起世界新秩序的曙光。

“In a sense,” Mr. Putin said, “the moment of truth is coming.”
“在某种意义上，”普京说，“真相的时刻即将到来。”

It may have already arrived.
可能已经到来了。

After three years of grinding warfare and isolation by the West, a world of new possibilities has opened up for Mr. Putin with a change of power in Washington.
经历了三年的残酷战争和西方的孤立，随着华盛顿的权力更迭，普京现在看到了许多全新的可能性。

Gone are the statements from the East Room of the White House about the United States standing up to bullies, supporting democracy over autocracy and ensuring freedom will prevail.
白宫东厅不再发出美国不向恶霸低头、支持民主战胜专制、确保自由占上风的宣言。

Gone, too, is Washington’s united front against Russia with its European allies, many of whom have begun to wonder if the new American administration will protect them against a revanchist Moscow, or even keep troops in Europe at all.
华盛顿与欧洲盟友对抗俄罗斯的联合战线也消失了，许多盟友开始怀疑，新一届美国政府是否会保护他们免遭俄罗斯寻仇，甚至是否会在欧洲保留军队。

Mr. Trump, having voiced desires to take Greenland, has pursued a rapid rapprochement with the Kremlin, while sidelining shocked European allies and publicly assailing President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
特朗普表达了夺取格陵兰岛的愿望，一直在寻求与克里姆林宫迅速和解，同时把震惊的欧洲盟友排除在外，他还公开攻击乌克兰总统泽连斯基。

It is a rapid shift of fortunes for Mr. Putin. He dug in on the battlefield — despite mounting pressures and costs — to wait out Western resolve in a far longer and more onerous conflict than Moscow had expected. Now, the Russian leader may believe his moment has come to shift the balance of power in favor of the Kremlin, not only in Ukraine.
对普京来说，这是一次命运的快速转变。在这场比莫斯科预期更漫长、更沉重的冲突中，尽管面临不断增加的压力和代价，普京正在稳守阵地，等待西方的决心出现动摇。现在，这位俄罗斯领导人可能认为，他的时刻已经到来，权力平衡将会朝着有利于克里姆林宫的方向转变，而且不仅是在乌克兰。

“I think he sees real opportunity, both to win the war in Ukraine, effectively, but also to sideline the U.S. not just from Ukraine but from Europe,” said Max Bergmann, a Russia analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who worked at the State Department during the Obama administration.
“我认为他看到了真正的机会，既能在实际上赢得乌克兰战争，又能把美国从乌克兰和欧洲排挤出去，”华盛顿战略与国际研究中心的俄罗斯问题分析师、曾就职于奥巴马政府的国务院的麦克斯·伯格曼说

The Russian leader’s “grandiose objective,” Mr. Bergmann said, is the destruction of NATO, the 32-country military alliance led by the United States, which was established after World War II to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union.
伯格曼说，普京的“宏伟目标”是摧毁北约。北约是一个由32个国家组成的军事联盟，由美国领导，在第二次世界大战后成立，目的是保护西欧不受苏联侵害。

“I think that is right now all on the table,” Mr. Bergmann said.
伯格曼说：“我认为现在这一切都摆在桌面上了。”

The opening represents one of the biggest opportunities for Mr. Putin in his quarter-century in power in Russia.
这是普京执掌俄罗斯25年来的最大机遇之一。

For years, Mr. Putin has lamented the weakness Russia showed in the decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and has fixated on reversing the influence the United States has since gained in Europe at the Kremlin’s expense.
多年来，普京一直哀叹俄罗斯在苏联解体后的10年里虚弱不堪，并一直专注于扭转美国在欧洲以牺牲克里姆林宫的利益为代价获得的影响力。

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago, Mr. Putin issued demands to the United States and its European allies that went far beyond Ukraine, proposing the resurrection of Cold War-style spheres of influence in a Europe divided between Moscow and Washington.
三年前俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之前，普京向美国及其欧洲盟友提出的要求远远超出了乌克兰的范畴，他提议在分别倒向莫斯科和华盛顿的欧洲恢复冷战式的势力范围。

He demanded that NATO agree not to expand farther east to any nations of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine. He also asked the United States and its Western European allies not to deploy any military forces or weaponry in the Central and Eastern European countries that once answered to Moscow.
他要求北约同意不再向东扩张到包括乌克兰在内的任何前苏联国家。他还要求美国及其西欧盟国不要在曾经听命于莫斯科的中欧和东欧国家部署任何军事力量或武器。

Many of those nations, such as Estonia, Poland and Romania, have been NATO members for decades and would be difficult to defend against a Russian invasion without pre-positioned troops and equipment.
爱沙尼亚、波兰和罗马尼亚等许多中东欧国家几十年来一直是北约成员国，如果没有预先部署的军队和装备，它们将很难抵御俄罗斯的入侵。

“In Putin’s view, it’s the most powerful countries that should get to determine the rules of the road,” said Angela Stent, emerita professor of government at Georgetown University. “Smaller countries, whether they like it or not, have to listen to them.”
“在普京看来，应该由最强大的国家来决定道路规则，”乔治城大学政府学荣休教授安吉拉·斯坦特说。“小国无论是否乐意，都得听他们的。”

Never mind, Ms. Stent said, that Russia lacks a superpower economy. “But it does have nuclear weapons, it has oil and gas and a veto on the U.N. Security Council,” she said. “It’s just power, hard power.”
斯坦特说，虽然俄罗斯缺乏超级大国应有的经济，“但是它确实拥有核武器，拥有石油和天然气，而且在联合国安理会拥有否决权，”她说。“这就是实力，硬实力。”

At the time, the West immediately rejected Mr. Putin’s prewar proposals as unthinkable. The Russian leader is now almost certain to revive them in impending negotiations with Mr. Trump, a longtime skeptic of NATO and American troop presence in Europe. That has prompted a crisis among European allies, who are worried about what the U.S. president might concede.
当时，西方立即拒绝了普京战前的提议，认为这是不可想象的。现在，这位俄罗斯领导人几乎肯定会在即将与特朗普进行的谈判中重启这些计划，特朗普长期以来一直对北约和美国在欧洲的驻军持怀疑态度。这在欧洲盟友中引发了危机，他们担心美国总统可能会做出让步。

“There is something very big going on at the moment,” said Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London. “This is not business as usual. This is a very different administration, and it’s very hard to see how trans-Atlantic relations will be the same at the end of this.”
“目前正在发生一件大事，”伦敦国王学院战争研究荣休教授劳伦斯·弗里德曼说。“这和往常不一样。这是一届非常不同的政府，很难想象在这届政府结束后，大西洋两岸的关系会是什么样子。”

Even if Mr. Trump’s return has shifted the geopolitical environment in Mr. Putin’s favor, the Russian leader has suffered serious setbacks over three years of war, and so far has failed to achieve his goal of bringing Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit.
即使特朗普的回归令地缘政治环境向有利于普京的方向转变，这位俄罗斯领导人在三年的战争中也遭受了严重挫折，迄今也未能实现将乌克兰重新纳入莫斯科轨道的目标。

Russia turned the tide on the battlefield, wresting about 1,500 square miles of land from Ukraine last year, but still has not taken the full territory of the four Ukrainian regions the Kremlin formally “annexed” in 2022. Though Ukrainian forces are reeling from personnel shortages, there has yet to be a vast Russian breakthrough causing a complete collapse of the Ukrainian lines.
俄罗斯在战场上扭转了局势，去年从乌克兰手中夺取了大约38.8万公顷的土地，但仍未完全占领克里姆林宫于2022年正式宣告“吞并”的乌克兰四个地区的领土。尽管乌克兰军队因人员短缺而陷入困境，但俄罗斯尚未取得能导致乌克兰防线彻底崩溃的重大突破。

Mr. Putin’s gains have also come at a significant cost. Russia is suffering losses from 1,000 to 1,500 dead and wounded per day by some estimates.
普京的成果也付出了巨大的代价。据某些估计，俄罗斯每天的伤亡人数在1000至1500人。

Russia’s war economy is showing strains, with 10 percent inflation, sky-high interest rates and sputtering economic growth, despite gargantuan state defense outlays. NATO has expanded to include two more nations in Russia’s backyard, Finland and Sweden, the opposite of what Mr. Putin intended.
俄罗斯的战争经济正显现出遭受压力的迹象，尽管国家国防开支巨大，但通货膨胀率达10%，利率高得惊人，经济增长缓慢。北约已经扩大，吸纳了俄罗斯后院的另外两个国家——芬兰和瑞典，这与普京的初衷背道而驰。

“If you’re sitting in the Kremlin looking at this, yes, there is an opportunity, but don’t get your hopes too high,” said Thomas Graham, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as a top White House adviser on Russia during the George W. Bush administration. “A lot could change quickly, and at the end of the day, Trump is unreliable.”
“如果你坐在克里姆林宫看着这件事，是的，确实有机会，但不要抱太大希望，”外交关系委员会研究员、曾在乔治·W·布什政府期间担任白宫俄罗斯问题高级顾问的托马斯·格雷厄姆说。“很多事情可能会很快发生变化，归根结底，特朗普是靠不住的。”

To end the war, Mr. Graham added, both parties need to agree to stop fighting. Ukraine and its European backers most likely will not simply accept a raw deal that Mr. Trump cuts with Mr. Putin, despite intense pressure they might face from Washington.
格雷厄姆还说，要结束战争，双方必须同意停止战斗。乌克兰及其欧洲支持者很可能不会简单地接受特朗普与普京达成的不公平协议，尽管他们可能面临来自华盛顿的巨大压力。

“This is a lot more complicated than simply Putin and Trump sitting down and signing a piece of paper basically prepared by Putin,” Mr. Graham said, noting that he “wouldn’t pop the champagne corks in Moscow right now,” even if Russia appears to be in a better position than it once was.
“这比普京和特朗普直接坐下来签署一份基本上由普京准备的文件要复杂得多，”格雷厄姆说。他指出，他“现在不会在莫斯科开香槟”，即使俄罗斯的处境似乎比以前好了很多。

Heading into talks, Mr. Trump faces the added difficulty that Mr. Putin is not a popular figure among the American public. Any deal seen as Kremlin appeasement could prove difficult to sell at home, though the vast majority of Americans favor a quick end to the conflict, which Mr. Trump promised on the campaign trail.
在谈判开始之前，特朗普还面临着另外一个困难，那就是普京在美国公众中不受欢迎。事实可能会证明，任何被视为对克里姆林宫绥靖的协议都很难在美国国内获得支持，尽管绝大多数美国人支持迅速结束冲突，而这也是特朗普在竞选活动中承诺的。

Last year, more than eight in 10 Americans expressed a negative view of Russia, and 88 percent said they did not have confidence in Mr. Putin to do the right thing in international affairs, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Nearly two-thirds of respondents called Russia an enemy of the United States.
皮尤研究中心的一项民意调查显示，去年，10个美国人中有八个以上对俄罗斯持负面看法，88%的人表示，他们对普京在国际事务中做正确的事情没有信心。近三分之二的受访者称俄罗斯是美国的敌人。

Mr. Trump’s own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who has been leading the talks so far, has in the past called Mr. Putin “bloodthirsty,” “a butcher” and “a monster.”
特朗普自己的国务卿鲁比奥迄今一直领导着谈判，他曾称普京“嗜血”，是“屠夫”和“怪物”。

Mr. Putin, however, has benefited from changes in the information landscape and increasing admiration in the right-wing media universe, led by the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who visited Moscow to interview him last year.
然而，普京受益于信息格局的变化，以及右翼媒体对他的日益推崇，以福克斯新闻前主持人塔克·卡尔森为首，他去年曾前往莫斯科采访普京。

Three years ago, Ukrainians successfully took to Twitter to popularize their cause around the globe at the outset of the invasion. But disinformation, often friendly to the Kremlin, has flourished on the platform since Elon Musk took over the company in 2022 and later rebranded the social media giant as X.
三年前，在俄罗斯入侵之初，乌克兰人成功地在Twitter上向全球宣传了他们的事业。但自埃隆·马斯克于2022年接管该公司并将这家社交媒体巨头重新命名为X以来，通常对克里姆林宫友好的虚假信息在该平台上大行其道。

Federal prosecutors last year said they had unearthed a covert Russian campaign to spread Kremlin-friendly messages by funneling money to right-wing American influencers through a Tennessee-based media company.
联邦检察官去年表示，他们发现一项隐蔽的俄罗斯行动，该行动通过一家总部位于田纳西州的媒体公司向美国右翼的网红提供资金，传播亲克里姆林宫信息。

The Western countries that lined up against Mr. Putin are facing their own problems at home. The two most influential countries in continental Europe — France and Germany — have been mired in political dysfunction for months and gripped by the rise of Kremlin-friendly far-right parties, now enjoying the backing of both Russian and American officials.
联合起来反对普京的西方国家在国内也面临着自己的问题。几个月来，欧洲大陆最具影响力的两个国家——法国和德国——陷入了政治失能的泥潭，亲克里姆林宫的极右翼政党崛起，这些政党现在得到了俄罗斯和美国官员的支持。

In the United States, Mr. Trump’s defense secretary has ordered senior leaders to begin the process of identifying major cuts in military spending. Some incoming top officials at the Pentagon have pushed for a significant withdrawal of American forces from Europe to focus on China, arguing that Europeans can handle their own defense.
在美国，特朗普的国防部长下令军队高层着手制定大幅削减军费的方案。五角大楼一些即将上任的高级官员已经推动美国从欧洲大规模撤军，以便将重点放在中国，他们认为欧洲人可以处理好自己的防务问题。

Mr. Putin and his advisers would welcome the change.
普京和他的顾问们会欢迎这一变化。

“I would imagine if they are smart, they would adhere to Napoleon — when your enemy is destroying itself, don’t interfere,” Mr. Graham said. “I think that would be the approach at the moment.”
“我可以想象，如果他们够聪明的话，他们会效仿拿破仑的做法——当你的敌人正在自取灭亡时，不要干涉，”格雷厄姆说。“我认为这就是他们目前的做法。”