在中期选举前的最后冲刺阶段，唐纳德·特朗普总统有很多理由感到不安：选民对物价上涨感到愤怒，合理的预测显示共和党将失去众议院——甚至可能失去参议院——以及伊朗战争陷入僵局。
President Donald Trump has a lot of reasons to be upset in the final stretch before the midterm elections: voters angry at rising prices, reasonable predictions that the GOP will lose the House — and maybe the Senate — and a stagnant war in Iran.
乌克兰总统弗拉基米尔·泽连斯基并不在让选民愤怒的事项清单上——然而在过去一周里，他却成了沮丧的特朗普发泄的对象。因为特朗普无法为任何事情怪罪自己，包括共和党目前的政治困境，特朗普及其错误的受害者心态再次将矛头指向乌克兰。
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not on the list of things making voters angry — and yet over the past week, he has been catching strays from a frustrated Trump. Because Trump is incapable of blaming himself for anything, including Republicans’ current political predicament, Trump and his misguided sense of victimhood are once again targeting Ukraine.
美国于2月下旬发动对伊朗战争后，全球能源价格飙升。美国人不得不在加油站花费更多，柴油价格飙升对农民打击尤甚。特朗普本月早些时候宣布，他已与俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京达成协议，向美国进口俄罗斯柴油以降低价格。
After the United States launched a war against Iran in late February, energy prices surged worldwide. Americans have grudgingly shelled out more at gas stations and the price of diesel has hit farmers particularly hard. Trump announced earlier this month that he’d struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import Russian diesel fuel to the U.S. to bring down prices.
专家表示，这对美国是一笔糟糕的交易，因为它将给莫斯科提供数十亿美元以继续对基辅的战争，且不太可能影响全球燃油价格。俄罗斯将出口的柴油俄罗斯国内仍然需要，这将维持需求——和价格——居高不下。泽连斯基正确地批评了特朗普-普京柴油协议，这促使特朗普因乌克兰袭击俄罗斯炼油厂而猛烈抨击他。他将柴油高价归咎于基辅的袭击。
Experts say this is a bum deal for the U.S, as it gives several billion dollars to Moscow to continue its war against Kyiv and is unlikely to affect global fuel prices. The diesel Russia would send is still needed by, well, Russians, which would keep demand — and prices — high. Zelenskyy rightly criticized the Trump-Putin diesel deal, which prompted Trump to lash out at him for Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries. He blamed Kyiv’s attacks for the high price of diesel.
“我建议他们换个能达成协议的领导人，因为他本可以达成许多协议，但出于某种原因，他从不这么做，”特朗普10月10日对记者说。他补充道：“我认为是时候让乌克兰换个总统了。”第二天，他宣布俄罗斯和乌克兰已同意实施“能源停火”——但两国迅速予以否认。令特朗普恼火的是，泽连斯基很快恢复了对俄罗斯能源基础设施的报复性袭击。（莫斯科已轰炸乌克兰电网数月。）此后，特朗普政府采取了几项令人担忧的行动，似乎意在惩罚乌克兰，特别是泽连斯基，为特朗普自己制造的问题买单。
“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals, and for some reason, he never does,” Trump told reporters on Oct. 10. He added, “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”The next day, he announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” — but both countries quickly denied it. Zelenskyy, much to Trump’s ire, soon resumed retaliatory attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure. (Moscow had bombarded the Ukrainian electrical grid for months.) The Trump administration has since taken several worrying actions that seem intent on punishing Ukraine, and Zelenskyy specifically, for a problem of Trump’s making.
上周，乌克兰对SpaceX军用级卫星互联网服务“星盾”的访问被中断。SpaceX首席执行官埃隆·马斯克表示，任何切断服务的决定都来自美国政府，而非他的公司。路透社报道称，该命令来自白宫内部，尽管政府特意否认是总统做出的决定。
Ukraine’s access to Starshield, SpaceX’s military-grade satellite internet service, was interrupted last week. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said any decision to shut off service came from the U.S. government, not his company. Reuters reported that the order came from inside the White House, though the administration pointedly denied that the president made the decision.
周五，特朗普推迟实施新一轮对俄制裁。暂停制裁的行政令称这是“符合美国国家利益”，但截至周一晚间，白宫尚未阐明具体原因。正如“星盾”服务中断一样，该行政令引发了两党愤怒，但特朗普没有给出任何动摇的信号。
On Friday, Trump delayed implementation of a new round of sanctions against Russia. The executive order pausing the sanctions said this was “in the national interests of the United States,” but as of Monday evening, the White House had yet to clarify exactly how. Much like the Starshield disruption, the executive order prompted bipartisan outrage, but Trump has given no signal that he’s wavering.
以上所有情况都很糟糕，但更令人担忧的是，除了特朗普之外，没人觉得这有战略意义，而特朗普长期以来一直表现出愿意把乌克兰当作政治出气筒。事实上，过去十年里，每当面临个人政治压力时，特朗普都表现出对基辅异常强烈的敌意。
All of the above is bad, but much more troubling is that none of it makes strategic sense to anyone but Trump, who has long demonstrated a willingness to use Ukraine as a political punching bag. Indeed, for the past decade, Trump has shown an outsized level of enmity toward Kyiv during periods of personal political stress.
2016年大选将特朗普送入白宫不久后，美国情报界认定俄罗斯曾试图通过一项大规模行动影响美国选民。对特朗普与该阴谋潜在关联的调查让他极为恼火，促使他接受了一种阴谋论，将责任推给乌克兰。在这个已被证伪的说法中，乌克兰陷害俄罗斯黑入民主党全国委员会的电子邮件服务器，并拿走了一台被入侵的服务器以隐藏证据。
Not long after the 2016 election swept Trump into the White House, the U.S. intelligence community determined that Russia had attempted to influence American voters in a wide-ranging operation. Investigations into Trump’s potential ties to that plot frustrated him to no end, leading him to embrace a conspiracy theory shifting the blame to Ukraine. In this debunked narrative, Ukraine framed Russia for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s email server and took one of the breached servers to hide the evidence.
这种信念成了总统首次试图为自己操纵2020年大选的主要图谋的因素。特朗普扣留了数十亿美元对乌军事援助，试图迫使新当选的泽连斯基寻找那台所谓的失踪服务器，并对时任前副总统乔·拜登及其儿子发起一项虚假的腐败调查。该丑闻导致特朗普首次遭弹劾。
This belief factored into the president’s first big scheme to rig the 2020 election on his own behalf. Trump had billions of dollars in military aid held back from Ukraine to try to force the newly elected Zelenskyy to find the supposed missing server and launch a bogus corruption investigation into Joe Biden, then the former vice president, and his son. The scandal led to Trump’s first impeachment.
自重返白宫以来，特朗普与泽连斯基的关系有时冷淡，更多时候则是冰冷。副总统万斯去年曾在椭圆形办公室公开斥责泽连斯基。那已是本就紧张关系中的一个低光时刻。与此同时，特朗普继续抨击泽连斯基拒绝与入侵者俄罗斯达成协议，但普京才是和平的最大障碍。
Since his return to the White House, Trump’s relationship with Zelenskyy has at times been lukewarm but has more often been frigid. Vice President JD Vance helped publicly berate Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last year. That was a lowlight in what was already a fraught dynamic. Meanwhile, Trump continues to slam Zelenskyy for refusing to make a deal with its invader Russia, but Putin is the greatest impediment to peace.
即使面对俄罗斯的侵略，乌克兰表现出勇气和韧性，特朗普仍将泽连斯基及其国家视为施加霸凌的目标。他将十多年来错误的愤怒倾泻在一个为生存而抗击帝国主义征服企图的国家肩上。
Even after Ukraine’s bravery and resilience in the face of Russia’s aggression, Trump still sees Zelenskyy and his country as targets for his bullying. He’s dropped more than 10 years of misplaced anger on the shoulders of a country struggling to survive an attempted imperial conquest.
但尽管特朗普竭力将自身无能的责任推给5000多英里外一个为生存而战的国家，极少数美国人似乎买账。为了改善自己的国内声望，特朗普再次加剧乌克兰的苦难与动荡。这一次似乎也不奏效。
But for all of Trump’s efforts to shift blame for his own ineptitude onto a country fighting for survival more than 5,000 miles away, very few Americans seem to be buying his spin. In hopes of improving his own domestic standing, Trump is once again exacerbating Ukrainian hardship and strife. It doesn’t seem to be working this time, either.