在特朗普所在的政党努力守住国会两院、其自身支持率跌至历史低点之际，总统本周一直在大力竞选，对象是……弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基。没错，特朗普十月的选前惊喜是，他终于决定公开帮助弗拉基米尔·普京，支持俄罗斯对乌克兰的征服战争。
At a time when Donald Trump’s party is struggling to hold both houses of Congress and his own approval ratings are cratering to historic lows, the President has been campaigning hard all week against . . . Volodymyr Zelensky. Yes, Trump’s October preëlection surprise is that he’s finally decided to begin openly helping Vladimir Putin in Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine.
特朗普多年来一直有意公开支持俄罗斯的战争行动，而最近事态又出现了新变化。上周五，特朗普与普京进行了长时间的电话交谈，随后宣布将解除对俄罗斯的能源制裁，以便美国能够购买数十万吨柴油。此举意在抑制美国国内不断上涨的油价——这些油价上涨在很大程度上正是拜特朗普本人挑起的中东战争所致。不过这一举措很可能收效甚微。
The latest twist in Trump’s years-long flirtation with outright support of the Russian war effort began last Friday, after the President held a lengthy call with Putin and announced that he was waiving energy sanctions on Russia to purchase hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel fuel—in an attempt, though likely a pointless one, to bring down surging prices in the U.S. owing largely to the war in the Middle East that Trump himself unleashed. At the same time, he began a drumbeat of accusations against Zelensky, blaming him and not Russia for the ongoing war, demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian energy facilities, and even calling for the Ukrainian President’s ouster.
与此同时，特朗普开始频繁指责泽连斯基，将当前战争的责任归咎于他而非俄罗斯，要求乌克兰停止袭击俄罗斯的能源设施，甚至呼吁让泽连斯基下台。“他想给全世界制造麻烦，”特朗普这样评价泽连斯基，“我建议他们另选一位领导人。”
“He wants to make problems for the world,” Trump insisted of Zelensky. “I suggest they get a new leader.”
周末期间，特朗普宣布两国之间达成“能源停火”，但这一说法似乎纯属子虚乌有：数小时后俄罗斯便发动了新的致命轰炸。就连劳拉·卢默也对此表示质疑。这位与白宫关系密切的阴谋论者过去一直是亲克里姆林宫的坚定支持者，但在访问乌克兰后改变了立场。她认为：“弗拉基米尔·普京试图羞辱特朗普政府。”不过，对于普京带来的种种“羞辱”，特朗普似乎全然不在意，依然坚持自己的立场。
Over the weekend, the President proclaimed an “ENERGY CEASE FIRE” between the two countries, but it appeared to have been entirely made up, and Russia launched deadly new bombardments within hours, leading no less than Laura Loomer, the White House-adjacent conspiracy theorist who used to be a reliably pro-Kremlin voice but recently switched sides after a trip to Ukraine, to conclude, “Vladimir Putin is trying to humiliate the Trump administration.”Trump, seemingly ever immune to humiliation when it comes to Putin, has not backed off, and the result is that, nearly a week later, he has created the most serious blowup yet of his Presidency with both Ukraine and the rest of the Western alliance. By Wednesday, after U.S.-supplied Starlink satellite service temporarily went down in advance of another large-scale Russian attack, Zelensky spoke publicly of the rift as all but a permanent break.
结果就是：近一周之后，他与乌克兰及整个西方联盟的关系出现了任内最严重的裂痕。到了周三，就在美国提供的星链卫星服务因俄罗斯即将发动大规模攻击而暂时中断后，泽连斯基公开表示，美乌关系几乎已彻底破裂。他对英国电视主持人皮尔斯·摩根说，乌克兰正在“失去一位强有力的伙伴”。
Ukraine is “losing a strong partner,” he told the British television host Piers Morgan. “It’s painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side.”That same day, in a defiant interview with the , he said Ukraine had voluntarily abided by Trump’s energy ceasefire for three days but would not anymore despite U.S. threats to cut off intelligence sharing if the strikes continued. “We’re done,” he said.
“当特朗普总统选择站在某一方（而不是我们这一方）时，真的令人痛心。”就在同一天，他在一次采访中表示：乌克兰曾自愿遵守特朗普提出的停火协议长达三天，但由于美国威胁称如果乌克兰继续进行军事行动就将切断情报共享，乌克兰决定不再遵守该协议。“我们受够了。”
This is not the first time Trump has tried to break with Ukraine. Who, after all, can forget the Oval Office confrontation with Zelensky in February of last year, when Trump and Vice-President J. D. Vance pushed him to cave in to their demands for Ukrainian territorial concessions as Trump ranted, “You don’t have the cards!”But timing is everything, in war as in midterm elections, and the moment is particularly risky as Trump’s envoys are again privately pressing Kyiv to agree to a deal that looks more like a surrender on Russia’s terms than a compromise, while Russia, having failed to achieve a battlefield victory despite an estimated 1.4 million casualties, has dramatically escalated its drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.
这并不是特朗普第一次试图与乌克兰对抗。毕竟，谁还能忘记去年2月在椭圆形办公室发生的那次冲突呢？当时特朗普和副总统J·D·万斯强迫泽连斯基屈服于他们的要求，要求乌克兰放弃部分领土；特朗普甚至愤怒地宣称：“你们根本没有谈判的筹码！”然而，在战争中，时机至关重要——尤其是在中期选举期间。目前的形势尤为危险：特朗普的特使们仍在私下里向基辅施压，要求其接受一项看似对俄罗斯有利、而非真正妥协的协议；而俄罗斯方面，尽管已造成约140万平民伤亡，却仍未在战场上取得胜利，反而大幅增加了对乌克兰的无人机和导弹攻击。
“The moment of greatest danger is now, in the near term,” Daniel Fried, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Europe, told me. He had just returned from meetings with security officials in Poland and Romania and was more concerned than ever not only about Ukraine’s situation but about an accelerated and intensified campaign of probing attacks by Russia against European allies as well. “That’s what bothers me: Putin knows this, and he will take advantage of it,” Fried said. “The short-term risk is right now.”One question is whether there is anyone in Washington who can or will do anything about it, given Trump’s expansive views of his own powers and his indifference to what Congress thinks—even when it’s controlled by his own party. “It’s a bitter, forceful reminder that Trump’s worst instincts to believe Putin and to care about what Putin says just keep winning out,” Chris Coons, the senator from Delaware, said. When we spoke on Thursday, Coons, who is in line to become the next chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee if Democrats take the Senate, recalled how much effort had gone into persuading Trump to sign a tough new Russia-sanctions bill, which was passed by a huge bipartisan congressional majority only a month ago and named in honor of the late Lindsey Graham, the one Republican senator with Trump’s ear who consistently pushed him to back Kyiv.
“目前，最危险的时刻就在眼前，”丹尼尔·弗里德（Daniel Fried）告诉我。他曾是美国驻欧洲的高级外交官，刚刚从波兰和罗马尼亚与安全官员的会议中归来。他比以往任何时候都更加担忧乌克兰的局势，同时也担心俄罗斯针对欧洲盟国的攻击行动正在加速并升级。“让我感到不安的是：普京很清楚这一点，他一定会利用这一机会，”弗里德说。
Now Trump has in effect blown up what had been his own Ukraine strategy, repeating a pattern that has recurred with depressing familiarity over the past decade, in which he will take some tentative step to aid Kyiv only to speak with Putin and revert to his default setting of tilting toward Moscow. “Is this a break that can be fixed with our European allies?”
“短期的风险就在当下。”一个问题是：在华盛顿，是否有人有能力或愿意采取行动来应对这一局势？毕竟特朗普对自身权力的理解非常狭隘，而且对国会的意见毫不在意——即使国会是由他所在的政党控制的。特拉华州参议员克里斯·库恩斯（Chris Coons）表示：“这再次残酷地证明了特朗普最糟糕的本能——即相信普京、并听从普京的话——仍在不断占据上风。”
Coons asked me, before answering his own question. “Not as long as Trump is President.”He expects more weeks like this to come as Trump enters the lame-duck phase of his Presidency.
我们在周四交谈时，库恩斯提到：为了说服特朗普签署这项新的对俄制裁法案，人们付出了巨大的努力；该法案是在一个月前由两党多数议员共同通过的，其命名是为了纪念已故的林赛·格雷厄姆（Lindsey Graham）——这位唯一一位能够影响特朗普、并始终敦促他支持基辅的共和党参议员。
“The damage he can do in the next two years is being underestimated,” he added.
如今，特朗普实际上已经破坏了自己原本制定的乌克兰政策。这种模式在过去十年里屡见不鲜：他会采取一些初步的援助基辅的行动，但随后又会与普京通话，然后再次转向支持莫斯科的立场。库恩斯问我：“这样的局面还能通过我们与欧洲盟国的合作得到改善吗？”在回答自己的问题之前，他补充道：“只要特朗普还担任总统，就不可能。”他认为，在特朗普进入总统任期最后阶段（即“跛脚鸭”时期）后，类似的情况还会继续发生。“他在未来两年内可能造成的破坏被严重低估了，”他补充道。
Trump has pivoted to Putin so many times before that it should hardly astonish anyone that he did it again. Back in 2016, I attended Trump’s first-ever foreign-policy speech, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where the Russian Ambassador sat in the front row while the candidate plugged “improved relations with Russia” as one of his main goals. (Trump also said in that speech that the U.S. should become more “unpredictable” as a nation. Promises kept!) Anyone who watched Trump’s 2018 Helsinki press conference, or the 2019 impeachment proceedings of the President for attempting to blackmail Zelensky, could have foreseen something like what happened this week. Ever since he came back to office last year, he’s been trying, on and off, to force Zelensky to accept “a settlement that could have been written in the Kremlin,” as his former national-security adviser John Bolton once put it. So, no, it’s not a surprise.
特朗普此前多次转向普京，因此他再次这样做，几乎不足为奇。早在2016年，我曾在华盛顿梅花酒店出席特朗普的第一次外交政策演讲，当时俄罗斯大使坐在前排，候选人将“改善与俄罗斯关系”列为其主要目标之一。（特朗普在该演讲中还表示，美国作为一个国家应变得更加“不可预测”。承诺兑现！）任何观看过特朗普2018年赫尔辛基新闻发布会，或2019年总统因试图勒泽连斯基而遭弹劾程序的人，都能预见到本周发生的类似事情。
自去年重返白宫以来，他断断续续地一直试图迫使泽连斯基接受“可能在克里姆林宫写就”的和解，正如他前国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿曾经所说。所以，不，这并不意外。
But these crises that Trump provokes with such regularity always manage to reveal something new, and this one has been no exception, showing a President so politically cornered by the consequences of his war in the Middle East that he turned to Putin to help him out with less than three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
但特朗普如此频繁挑起的这些危机总能揭示一些新东西，这一次也不例外，显示出一位总统因中东战争的后果而陷入政治困境，以至于在中期选举前不到三周的时间里，转向普京寻求帮助。说这在政治上不受欢迎，那简直是轻描淡写。
To say that this has not gone over well as a matter of politics would be an understatement.
“特朗普支持独裁者普京，却反对那些渴望自由与独立的乌克兰人民，”内布拉斯加州的共和党议员唐·贝肯在社交媒体X上写道。随着时间的推移，贝肯还将特朗普比作内维尔·张伯伦，称其政策为“绥靖政策”，并表示：“普京对特朗普的操控手段前所未有。”六位共和党参议员联名致信特朗普，指责他与俄罗斯签订的柴油交易“是对敌人的馈赠，也是对盟友的背叛”。
“Trump supports the Dictator Putin and opposes Ukraine who wants our freedom and Independence,” one Republican congressman, Don Bacon of Nebraska, posted on X. As the week went on, Bacon also compared Trump to Neville Chamberlain, called his policy “appeasement,” and said, “Putin is playing President Trump like never seen before.”Six G.O.P. senators complained in a letter to Trump that his diesel deal with Russia was “a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies.”
该报的编辑部将这一行为称为“道德与战略上的错误”；这一批评很快被特朗普的第一任副总统迈克·彭斯在社交媒体上转发。彭斯表示：“够了，不能再这样下去了。”而这仅仅只是各方对此事的初步反应罢了。
The editorial board called it a “moral and strategic mistake”—a lament quickly circulated on social media by Trump’s first-term Vice-President, Mike Pence. “Enough is enough,” Pence said. And this was just the reaction from .
他们的反对意见反映了现实中的政治状况：尽管特朗普多年来一直大力支持普京，但这位俄罗斯领导人及其发动的战争在美国仍然极不受欢迎——甚至比特朗普本人更不受欢迎，这实在是个令人震惊的事实。本周福克斯新闻的一项民意调查显示，特朗普在该电视台的支持率跌至历史新低（仅36%）；70%的美国人认为他在经济管理方面表现糟糕。这也难怪。前几天的一则新闻标题精准地反映了共和党政治顾问在选举前19天所设想的“最糟糕的局面”：“飙升的能源价格进一步推高了通货膨胀率。”
Their pushback reflects a political reality: despite Trump’s years of plumping for Putin, the Russian leader and his war remain deeply unpopular in the United States—even more unpopular than Trump himself, which is saying something. A new Fox News survey this week had Trump at his lowest level ever for the network, with a thirty-six-per-cent job approval; seventy per cent of Americans now believe he is doing a bad job on the economy. No wonder. A headline in the the other day summed up what can only be imagined as a Republican political consultant’s vision of hell nineteen days before the election: “Soaring Energy Prices Push Inflation Higher.”
特朗普本周再次加大力度攻击泽连斯基，似乎是在试图制造一个“替罪羊”。这是安吉拉·斯滕特（Angela Stent）的观点；她是一位研究俄罗斯问题的权威学者，在布什政府期间曾担任负责俄罗斯和欧亚事务的国家情报官员。她告诉我：“如果共和党在中期选举中表现不佳，特朗普正在为将来指责泽连斯基制造借口。这就是他现在这么做的根本原因。如果柴油价格没有大幅下降，他会把责任推到乌克兰身上，声称泽连斯基必须下台。”
In attacking Zelensky with renewed vigor all week, Trump seems to think he’s creating a scapegoat. That is the theory of Angela Stent, a leading Russia scholar who served as national-intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia during the Bush Administration. “Trump is preparing the ground to blame Zelensky if the Republicans do badly in the midterms,” she told me. “That’s the main reason he is doing this now. If diesel prices don’t come down much, he will say it’s Ukraine’s fault and that Zelensky has to go.”
这种说法确实有一定道理——特朗普确实是个擅长推卸责任的“高手”。但在美国民众普遍不满的当下，要求乌克兰罢免泽连斯基显然并非他们所期望的解决方案。即使在特朗普自己的“信息茧房”里，他也应该明白这一点。他肯定已经意识到：即便俄罗斯的柴油燃料真的运到了美国，也根本不可能在11月3日之前对特朗普产生任何实质性的帮助。这一切更让人担忧：难道特朗普转向普京，不是为了帮助自己的政党获胜，而是因为他真的希望俄罗斯能够掌控局势吗？
No doubt there’s something to it. Trump is nothing if not a world-class blame-shifter. But demanding that Ukraine fire Zelensky is hardly the rallying cry that Americans are looking for in this season of our own discontent. Trump, even in his Truth Social bubble, must know that. He is certainly aware by now that no amount of Russian diesel fuel, if it ever gets here at all, will reach the U.S. in time to save him before November 3rd. All of which raises an even more worrisome possibility: What if Trump is pivoting to Putin not to help his party to win but because he really wants Russia to?