乌克兰人已经习惯了可怕的消息。但即使按他们的标准，过去几天也感到阴郁。俄罗斯的导弹袭击正在无情地轰炸乌克兰城市。特朗普上周宣布了一项协议，计划购买俄罗斯的柴油燃料。随后传出美国对乌克兰支持中断的报道，包括星链通信系统。这些发展共同导致基辅出现自战争开始以来罕见的警觉。
Ukrainians have gotten used to awful news. But even by their standards, the past several days have felt dismal. Russian missile strikes are pounding Ukrainian cities relentlessly. Donald Trump announced a deal last week to buy Russian diesel fuel. Then came reports about disruptions in U.S. support to Ukraine, including the Starlink communication system. Together, these developments have caused alarm in Kyiv on a scale rarely seen since the start of the war.
唯一的慰藉出现在周五，当时乌克兰人有机会想象他们的折磨者弗拉基米尔·普京乘坐总统专机，因飞机在莫斯科上空盘旋而无法降落在自己的首都而愤怒。一群乌克兰无人机当天迫使该市四个机场全部关闭——就在普京从土库曼斯坦访问返回途中。他的专机，被称为“飞行克里姆林宫”，看来并不是这次行动的目标。“这纯属巧合，”一位熟悉该行动的军官告诉我。
The only letup in the gloom appeared on Friday, when Ukrainians had a chance to imagine their tormentor, Vladimir Putin, aboard his presidential plane, seething as it circled over Moscow, unable to land in his own capital. A swarm of Ukrainian drones had forced the closure of the city’s airports that day—all four of them—as Putin flew home from a trip to Turkmenistan. His plane, known as the Flying Kremlin, does not appear to have been the target. “It was purely coincidental,” a military officer familiar with the operation told me.
“只是偶然的事。”但对许多乌克兰人来说，这短暂地尝到了复仇的滋味，也表明他们的军队仍有办法伤害俄罗斯的经济及其领导人，即使特朗普决定抛弃他们。周二晚上，近500架无人机袭击了莫斯科，再次促使该市机场关闭，据该市市长称。这种方法可能不足以迫使普京谈判。但如果乌克兰选择这样做，它能够继续作战，并对莫斯科施加压力，使其回到谈判桌前。
“Just a matter of chance.”Still, to many Ukrainians, it tasted briefly of revenge, and it showed that their military still has ways to hurt Russia’s economy and its leader, even if Trump decides to abandon them. On Tuesday night, nearly 500 drones attacked Moscow, again prompting the closure of its airports, according to the city’s mayor. Such methods may not be enough to force Putin to negotiate. But they allow Ukraine, if it chooses, to stay in the fight and keep up the pressure on Moscow to come to the table.
自上月初以来，乌克兰无人机几乎每天都在干扰俄罗斯首都上空的空中交通，这是一项代号为M&Ms的军事行动的版本，《大西洋月刊》首次在八月份报道了这一行动。该行动的两位策划者告诉我，该行动并不依赖美国的技术或情报。相反，它使用的是在乌克兰生产、配备人工智能制导系统的无人机，将战争带到俄罗斯。
Since early last month, Ukrainian drones have interfered with air traffic over the Russian capital almost every day, a version of a military operation code-named M&Ms, which The Atlantic first reported in August. The operation does not rely on U.S. technology or intelligence, two of its architects told me. Instead, it uses drones produced in Ukraine and equipped with AI guidance systems to bring the war to Russia. (Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans.)
（两位消息人士出于对敏感军事计划的讨论需求，要求匿名。）这种本土创新可能在未来的任何和平谈判中为乌克兰提供筹码。但这对全球航空安全形势并不乐观。自2001年9月11日的恐怖袭击以来，机场和飞机从未显得如此脆弱。本周末，得到伊朗支持的胡塞武装组织向利雅得的主要机场发射了两轮导弹和无人机，造成十余人死亡、数百人受伤。
Such homegrown innovations could give Ukraine leverage in any future peace talks. But they do not bode well for the global state of aviation safety. Not since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have airports and airplanes looked more vulnerable. The Houthi rebel group, which is backed by Iran, launched two salvos of missiles and drones this weekend at the main airport in Riyadh, killing more than a dozen people and wounding hundreds.
一周前，美国空军据称因伊朗无人机的威胁，从英国的一个空军基地撤离了一 dozen 架轰炸机。
A week earlier, the U.S. Air Force evacuated a dozen bombers from an air base in England, reportedly due to a threat from Iranian drones.
这些武器的扩散使得此类袭击变得更加便宜和容易实施。八月初，德国当局在莱比锡附近的一个机场发现了一架疑似俄罗斯的无人机，显然装有炸药，准备炸毁一架乌克兰货机。一个月后，俄罗斯无人机在泽连斯基的专机从摩尔多瓦起飞前往挪威时将其作为目标。“这就是他所面临的现实，”挪威首相表示，他首次报道了对泽连斯基生命的显然企图。
The spread of these weapons has made such attacks far cheaper and easier to stage. In early August, German authorities discovered a suspected Russian drone at an airport near Leipzig, apparently armed with explosives and prepared to blow up a Ukrainian cargo jet. A month later, Russian drones targeted Zelensky’s plane as it took off from Moldova on the way to Norway. “That is the reality he lives in,” Norway’s prime minister, who first reported the apparent attempt on Zelensky’s life, said.
许多世界领导人如今已经身处这种现实之中，普京也不例外。在他飞往莫斯科的航班被改道的那天，俄罗斯领导人花了90分钟与特朗普通电话。通话结束后，特朗普宣布美国将购买数百万桶俄罗斯柴油。为保护这笔交易，特朗普敦促乌克兰停止轰炸俄罗斯的炼油厂。泽连斯基近几天勉强遵从了这一要求。但他的军队加强了对其他敏感目标的袭击，这可能对俄罗斯经济和人民生活造成同样严重的破坏。过去一周对俄罗斯数据中心的连续袭击已经表明了这一点。
Many world leaders now live in that reality, even Putin. On the day of his diverted flight to Moscow, the Russian leader spent 90 minutes on the phone with Trump, who announced after their call that the United States would buy millions of barrels of Russian diesel. To protect that deal, Trump urged Ukraine to stop bombing Russian oil refineries. Zelensky has reluctantly complied in recent days. But his military has intensified attacks on other sensitive targets, which could prove no less disruptive for Russia’s economy and the lives of its people. The spate of attacks on Russian data centers in the past week has made that clear.
自10月8日起，乌克兰已对至少四个俄罗斯数据中心实施轰炸——这是一类此前被乌克兰避免攻击的目标。这些袭击导致在线服务广泛中断，包括俄罗斯一些最受欢迎的银行、快递、地图和打车应用。根据莫斯科回声电台（一家俄罗斯新闻媒体）统计的数据，仅上周一周，乌克兰无人机就迫使莫斯科机场当局取消了345架次航班。
Since October 8, Ukraine has bombed at least four Russian data centers, a class of targets it previously avoided. The attacks caused widespread outages of online services, including some of Russia’s most popular banking, delivery, map, and taxi apps. At Moscow’s airports, Ukrainian drones forced authorities to cancel 345 flights last week alone, according to a tally kept by Echo of Moscow, a Russian news outlet.
泽连斯基在9月1日宣布启动扰乱俄罗斯空中交通的行动时说：“俄罗斯的天空正变得极其危险。” “民用航空在此没有立足之地。” 策划此次行动的两位主要负责人告诉我，这项行动才刚刚开始。到目前为止，乌克兰一直使用远程无人机堵塞俄罗斯机场周边的空域，而不对机场本身进行直接打击。就在本周末的一次事件中，一架被击落的乌克兰无人机的碎片据报道落在索契机场，导致一栋行政楼起火。
“The Russian sky is becoming extremely dangerous,” Zelensky said on September 1, when he announced the start of the campaign to disrupt air traffic in Russia. “Civilian aviation has no place amid drones.”The two architects of this campaign told me that it is only just getting started. So far, Ukraine has used long-range drones to clog the airspace around Russian airports without striking them directly. In one incident this weekend, debris from a downed Ukrainian drone reportedly fell on the airport in Sochi, causing a fire at an administrative building.
泽连斯基尚未允许其军队按照原定计划实施“M&Ms”行动——该计划要求采取更为激进的战术。
Zelensky has not yet allowed his military to proceed with the original plan for operation M&Ms, which called for much more aggressive tactics.
根据该计划的作者所述，更雄心勃勃的版本将使用人工智能引导的无人机来规避俄罗斯的防空系统，并袭击莫斯科及其他城市的机场。该计划的作者之一告诉我，这些无人机将很快实现规模化生产。
According to the authors of the plan, the more ambitious version would use AI-guided drones to circumvent Russian air defenses and hit airports in Moscow and other cities. These drones will soon be manufactured at scale, one of the authors of the plan told me.
尽管特朗普曾干预以确保俄罗斯柴油的供应，但他对最近针对俄罗斯机场和数据中心的袭击保持沉默。相反，当他上个月首次致电泽连斯基，要求其停止轰炸俄罗斯的炼油厂时，他通过邀请乌克兰轰炸其他目标来缓和了自己的要求。“还有许多其他目标，”特朗普说。
Although Trump has intervened to secure supplies of Russian diesel, he has said nothing about the recent attacks on Russian airports and data centers. On the contrary, when he first called on Zelensky last month to stop bombing Russian oil refineries, he tempered his demand with an invitation for Ukraine to bomb something else. “There are plenty of other targets,” Trump said.
但同样的情况也适用于乌克兰。上个月，当泽连斯基启动“M&Ms行动”时，俄罗斯加强了对平民的轰炸，发动了针对公寓楼、学校和学术机构的常规白天袭击。此类袭击除了恐吓民众之外，没有其他军事目的。联合国最近的伤亡报告称，俄罗斯的轰炸行动在上个月达到了“新的强度水平”，在9月1日至24日（报告发布之日）期间，至少造成200名平民死亡、1234人受伤。
But the same holds true of Ukraine. Last month, when Zelensky began the M&Ms operation, Russia intensified its bombing of civilians, launching regular daytime strikes against apartment blocks, schools, and academic institutions. Such attacks serve no military purpose other than to terrorize the population. The most recent casualty report from the United Nations said that the Russian bombing campaign reached “a new level of intensity” last month, killing at least 200 civilians and injuring 1,234 from September 1 to 24, when the report came out.
战争已进入这一阶段，升级呈双向态势。无论乌克兰部署何种新武器和战术，俄罗斯总能以更大的残暴性作出回应。特朗普似乎不再有兴趣制止这一暴力循环。他已从战争双方的调解者角色转变为与俄罗斯的交易方，这给泽连斯基带来了一个鲜明的选择：接受特朗普和普京的要求，在俄罗斯的条件下结束战争；或寻找新的方式继续作战，无论是否有美国的支持。
At this stage in the war, the escalations cut both ways. No matter what new weapons and tactics Ukraine deploys, Russia can always answer with more brutality. Trump no longer seems interested in stopping that cycle of violence. He has shifted from the role of mediator between warring sides to a dealmaker with the Russians, and that presents Zelensky with a stark choice: accept Trump’s and Putin’s demands to end the war on Russia’s terms or find new ways to continue fighting, with or without American support.
今年年初，当乌克兰官员首次向泽连斯基提出M&Ms计划时，他觉得这太危险了。该计划要求每天动用多达1000架无人机袭击莫斯科的机场，以至于民航航班无法运行。泽连斯基允许当时的国防部长米哈伊洛·费多罗夫继续研发该行动所需的AI赋能无人机。但泽连斯基对其部署保持严格控制，坚持让费多罗夫将对旅客的风险降到最低，该计划的两位设计者这样告诉我。
At the start of this year, when Ukrainian officials first offered Zelensky the M&Ms plan, he deemed it too dangerous. It called for as many as 1,000 drones to attack Moscow’s airports every day, making it impossible for civilian flights to operate. Zelensky allowed his defense minister at the time, Mykhailo Fedorov, to continue developing the AI-enabled drones required for the operation. But Zelensky kept a tight rein on their deployment, insisting that Fedorov minimize the risk to travelers, the two designers of the plan told me.
我于8月20日首次报道该行动，引发了关于其道德性的激烈公众辩论。乌克兰及其西方盟国的许多人指出，俄罗斯对轰炸平民毫无顾忌。“一方违反所有战争规则而另一方却保持克制，这不公平，”一位欧洲高级官员就泽连斯基的犹豫向我表示。
My first report about the operation, published on August 20, led to an intense public debate about its morality. Many in Ukraine and allied Western countries noted that Russia has shown no qualms about bombing the innocent. “It’s not fair for one side to break all the rules of war while the other side holds back,” a senior European official told me of Zelensky’s hesitation.
该计划的设计者之一告诉我，公众压力促成了泽连斯基决定在9月1日宣布行动开始。当天发布的视频讲话中，他呼吁所有国际航空公司停止飞往俄罗斯机场。“乌克兰并不威胁民用航空——没有一架民用飞机，”他说。“仅仅是在俄罗斯上空会有必须被考虑进去规模的无人机。”当时，乌克兰尚无能力实施泽连斯基的威胁，行动背后的一位官员告诉我。
One of the architects of the plan told me that public pressure contributed to Zelensky’s decision to announce the start of the campaign on September 1. In a video address released that day, he called for all international airlines to stop flying to Russian airports. “Ukraine does not threaten civilian aviation as such—not a single civilian aircraft,” he said. “There will simply be drones in Russia’s skies on a scale that has to be taken into account.”At the time, Ukraine did not have the means to act on Zelensky’s threat, one of the officials behind the operation told me.
军方缺乏长期关闭莫斯科机场所需的庞大专用无人机机队，他说。针对泽连斯基的宣言，只有外航坦桑尼亚航空短暂暂停了飞往莫斯科的航班。阿联酋航空和飞迪拜等大型航空公司则照常运营。“我们没有落实，”乌克兰官员沮丧地告诉我。
The military lacked the enormous fleet of specialized drones required to shut down Moscow’s airports for an extended period of time, he said. In response to Zelensky’s declaration, only one foreign carrier, Air Tanzania, briefly suspended flights to Moscow. Larger airlines, such as Emirates and Flydubai, continued as normal. “We didn’t follow through,” the Ukrainian official told me in frustration.
乌克兰武器制造商仍在开发专用无人机舰队，该舰队依赖一种名为地图匹配的AI启用技术来识别目标并决定何时发动攻击，该计划的第二负责人告诉我。他说，乌克兰首次在9月中旬使用这种新型无人机进行作战，当时少量无人机袭击了俄罗斯占领的顿涅茨克地区的目标。他补充说，这些无人机尚未在俄罗斯机场实施大规模部署。
Ukrainian arms manufacturers are still developing the specialized drone fleet, which relies on an AI-enabled technique known as map matching to identify targets and decide when to strike, the second person behind the plan told me. He said Ukraine first used this new type of drone in combat in mid-September, when a handful of them struck targets in the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk. They have not yet been deployed at scale against Russian airports, he added.
相反，乌克兰武装部队使用其他武器来达到类似效果。无人机不需要直接瞄准机场，只需在莫斯科上空出现，迫使俄罗斯当局取消航班或关闭跑道，直至威胁消散。泽连斯基的一位顾问称这是乌克兰对俄罗斯各目标进行常规无人机袭击的“副作用”。泽连斯基更倾向于这种方法，因为它不涉及针对民用飞机。“那将是海盗行为，”这位顾问说，他未参与名为M&Ms的行动。
Instead, the Ukrainian armed forces have used other weapons to achieve a similar effect. Rather than targeting airports directly, drones need only to appear in the sky around Moscow, forcing Russian authorities to cancel flights or close runways until the threat subsides. One adviser to Zelensky called it a “side effect” of Ukraine’s regular drone strikes against various targets in Russia. Zelensky prefers this approach because it does not involve targeting civilian aircraft. “That would be piracy,” the adviser, who has not been involved in the operation known as M&Ms, said.
“总统不想允许这种情况发生。”他的做法仍然给俄罗斯旅客带来干扰。根据莫斯科回声电台的统计，本月第一周，该市机场平均每天限制航班超过三小时。周五，当普京的飞机在首都找不到安全着陆点时，莫斯科四个机场中至少有两个对所有航班关闭了大约七个小时。
“The president doesn’t want to allow that.”His approach has still been disruptive for travelers in Russia. According to the tally from Echo of Moscow, the city’s airports restricted flights, on average, for more than three hours a day during the first full week of this month. On Friday, when Putin’s plane could not find a place to safely land in the capital, at least two of Moscow’s four airports remained closed to all flights for roughly seven hours.
对于普通民众而言，乌克兰新一轮针对俄罗斯数据中心的袭击，使这些中断问题变得更加严重。大多数攻击都针对了Yandex的设施——这家本地企业相当于谷歌，是俄罗斯数字经济的中枢。数百万俄罗斯人每天使用其服务，而最近一次服务中断也引发了他们在社交媒体上的愤怒吐槽。据俄罗斯商业报纸《生意人报》报道，Yandex可能需要长达六个月的时间来修复其数据中心所受的损害。
For regular citizens, these disruptions have been compounded by the new wave of Ukrainian strikes against Russian data centers. Most of the attacks have targeted the facilities of Yandex, a local counterpart to Google that acts as the backbone of Russia’s digital economy. Millions of Russians use its services every day, and many of them posted angry rants on social media in response to the latest outages. Yandex could need up to six months to repair the damage to its data centers, the Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported.
泽连斯基在周一向华沙安全论坛发表的视频讲话中指出，对乌克兰及其许多盟友来说，这些袭击还有一个额外的好处：它们似乎导致俄罗斯网络机器人在互联网上的活动急剧减少。“许多社交媒体平台突然变得轻松了一些，”他说，“仇恨减少了，分裂减少了，挑衅也减少了，因为机器人变少了。”作为对这类袭击的回应，俄罗斯军方扩大了对平民目标的打击。
As a bonus for Ukraine and many of its allies, the attacks appear to have caused a sharp decline in the activity of Russian bots across the internet, Zelensky noted in a video address to the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday. “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social-media platforms,” he said. “There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations, because there were fewer bots.”In response to such attacks, the Russian military has expanded its strikes against civilians.
火车头已成为他们偏爱的目标。乌克兰国家铁路公司负责人奥列克桑德·佩尔茨奥夫斯基告诉我，8月份共有37列火车遭到袭击，平均每天超过一列。上个月，这一数字上升至47列，其中包括货运列车和客运列车。几周前我们在基辅会面时，佩尔茨奥夫斯基拿出手机，滑动展示了一系列照片，每张照片都显示着被爆炸摧毁的火车。
Locomotives have become a favorite target. In August, 37 of them came under attack, more than one a day, the head of Ukraine’s state railway company, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, told me. Last month, the number rose to 47, including freight and passenger trains. When we met in Kyiv a few weeks ago, Pertsovskyi pulled out his phone and scrolled through a series of photos, each one showing trains torn apart by explosions.
其中一节被炸毁的卧铺车厢，其烧黑的床铺和行李散落在铁轨上。“现在我的每一天早晨都是这样开始的——伴随着这些报告和画面，”他说。
One of the gutted sleeper carriages had spilled its blackened cots and luggage onto the tracks. “This is how my mornings start now, with these reports and images, every day,” he said.
几天之后，俄罗斯无人机促使一列载有外国要员从基辅前往波兰的列车疏散，其中包括前中央情报局局长大卫·彼得雷乌斯。一名乘客，一位美国慈善家，告诉我，她在疏散期间半夜涉水穿过沼泽地以逃离列车。此次袭击提醒人们，无论乌克兰在打击莫斯科经济压力点方面多么有创意，俄罗斯总能升级冲突，践踏这场战争中尚未被践踏的任何规范。
A few days later, Russian drones prompted the evacuation of a train full of foreign dignitaries traveling from Kyiv to Poland, including David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA. One of the passengers, an American philanthropist, told me she walked through marshy fields in the middle of the night to get away from the train during an evacuation. The attack served as a reminder that no matter how creative Ukraine gets in targeting Moscow’s economic pressure points, Russia can always escalate, stomping on whatever norms remain untrampled in this war.
特朗普购买俄罗斯燃料的交易将使这变得更容易，因为它邀请克里姆林宫通过数十亿美元的出口收入来补充其战争资金。该交易还解除了美国为惩罚和孤立俄罗斯而实施的一些制裁，使普京接受停火的理由更少了。
Trump’s deal to buy Russian fuel will make that easier by inviting the Kremlin to top up its war chest with billions of dollars in export revenue. The deal also lifts some of the sanctions that the U.S. had imposed to punish and isolate Russia, leaving Putin with even less reason to accept a cease-fire.
对于泽连斯基团队的某些成员来说，这种美国的背叛行为感觉不像是他们赢得战争战略的挫折，而更像是他们获胜最佳希望的终结。甚至负责关闭莫斯科机场计划的官员之一也告诉我，如果美国站在俄罗斯一边，乌克兰几乎别无选择，只能放弃升级的阶梯并寻求和平。“现在人们意识到，俄罗斯不会因其艰难的经济状况而崩溃，”他说。
For some members of Zelensky’s team, that act of American betrayal felt less like a setback for their strategy to win the war than it did the end of their best hope for victory. Even one of the officials behind the plan to shut down Moscow’s airports told me that if the U.S. sides with Russia, Ukraine would have little choice but to abandon the ladder of escalation and sue for peace. “There’s a realization now that Russia will not collapse because of its difficult economic situation,” he said.
通过向俄罗斯能源行业提供生命线，特朗普使美国成为乌克兰通过耗尽俄罗斯经济和耗竭其人口来削弱俄罗斯战略的障碍。“这意味着我们需要改变战略，”该官员说。“俄罗斯不会崩溃，至少目前不会。”乌克兰仍有许多方式让俄罗斯的生活变得痛苦，但要迫使普京接受停火，可能需要的不仅仅是这些。
In offering a lifeline to Russia’s energy industry, Trump made the U.S. an obstacle to the Ukrainian strategy of wearing down the Russian economy and exhausting its population. “That means we need to change our strategy,” the official said. “Russia will not collapse, at least not now.”Ukraine still has plenty of ways to make life miserable in Russia, but it will likely take more than that to force Putin to accept a truce.