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| PARIS — For the prime minister of Lithuania — and Lithuania knows something of life in Moscow’s imperium — President Vladimir V. Putin’s rambling dismissal of Ukrainian statehood, used to justify sending Russian troops into the eastern part of that state, “put Kafka and Orwell to shame.” |
| 巴黎——立陶宛了解莫斯科帝国的行为方式，用其总理的话来说，总统普京为证明向乌克兰东部派遣俄罗斯军队的正当性而否认乌克兰国家地位的长篇大论，“让卡夫卡和奥威尔都自惭形秽。” |
| There were “no lows too low, no lies too blatant,” the prime minister, Ingrida Simonyte, said of Mr. Putin’s menacing explanation on Monday of his decision to recognize two separatist regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk. But if the speech revived the doublespeak of the Soviet Union, more than 30 years after its demise, did it also rekindle the Soviet threat and the Cold War that went with it? |
| 周一，立陶宛总理英格丽达·西蒙尼特在谈到普京决定承认乌克兰的两个分离主义地区——顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克时的威胁性解释时说，“没有比这更无耻的行为，也没有比这更公然的谎言”。但是，在苏联解体30年后，如果这次讲话再次让人看到了苏联的欺人之谈，那么它是否也重新点燃了苏联的威胁和与之相伴的冷战？ |
| On many levels, the challenge Mr. Putin’s revanchist Russia presents to the West is different. This Russia has no pretense of a global ideology. The Cold War depended on closed systems; computer technology put an end to that. No Soviet tanks are poised to roll across the Prussian plains and absorb all Europe in a totalitarian empire. Nuclear Armageddon is not on the table. |
| 在许多层面上，普京的复仇主义俄罗斯向西方发起的挑战不同于苏联。这个俄罗斯没有假装某种全球意识形态。冷战依赖于封闭系统，而计算机技术结束了这一状态。不再有苏联坦克准备横穿普鲁士平原，将整个欧洲纳入一个极权帝国。核武器末日议题也可以先放到一边。 |
| Yet, perhaps because of the way he prepared the ground for full-scale war, saying Russia has “every right to take retaliatory measures” against what he called a fictive nation led by usurpers who would be responsible for the bloodshed, Mr. Putin’s decision felt like a breaking point that went beyond his annexation of Crimea in 2014. It held up the specter of Europe’s darkest days. He laid down a marker, setting the outer limit of the Europe whole and free of 1989. |
| 然而，也许是因为普京为全面战争铺平道路的方式，他说俄罗斯“完全有权采取报复措施”对付他所谓的虚假国家——这些由篡夺者领导的国家将对流血事件负责。普京的决定感觉就像一个突破点，超越了他在2014年对克里米亚的吞并。它让欧洲陷入对最黑暗的日子的恐惧。他放置了一个标记，设定了1989年那个完整而自由欧洲的外部边界。 |
| The Russian president’s aggressive move was a slap in the face to President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has led efforts to engage with Russia, and it left, at least for now, the idea of some reconfigured European security architecture moribund. |
| 俄罗斯总统咄咄逼人的举动是对法国总统马克龙的一记耳光，后者一直带头努力与俄罗斯接触，这导致——至少目前看来——一些重新配置欧洲安全架构的想法已经停滞不前。 |
| In its place, division and confrontation loomed in a world marked by what Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called “President Putin’s flagrant disrespect for international law and norms.” The White House called Russia’s move “the beginning of an invasion.” |
| 在这个国务卿安东尼·布林肯所说的“普京总统公然蔑视国际法和规范”为标志的世界，取而代之的是迫在眉睫的分裂和对抗。白宫称俄罗斯的举动是“入侵的开始”。 |
| China, walking a fine line between its support for Mr. Putin and its support for the territorial integrity of sovereign nations, has declined to criticize Russia, while saying those norms must be upheld. Still, in a month when Russia and China cemented a friendship with “no limits,” Mr. Putin’s order to dispatch troops into Ukraine suggested how Russian military might and Chinese ideological and economic heft might form a potent anti-democratic front. |
| 中国在对普京的支持和对主权国家领土完整的支持之间选择了一条微妙的界限，它拒绝批评俄罗斯，同时又表示这些规范必须得到维护。尽管如此，在俄罗斯和中国宣布“没有止境”地巩固友好关系一个月不到，普京下令向乌克兰派遣军队表明，俄罗斯的军事实力以及中国的意识形态和经济影响力将形成一个强有力的反民主阵线。 |
| President Biden has often referred to an “inflection point” between liberal democracy and autocratic systems. For now, that point seems to lie in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of a country whose name means borderland. |
| 拜登总统经常提到自由民主和专制制度之间的“拐点”。目前，这个拐点似乎就在一个国家的顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克地区，而这个国家的名字意思是边界。 |
| How far Mr. Putin is prepared to go remains unclear. A senior French official at the presidency, who insisted on anonymity in line with government practice, described the Russian leader’s speech as at once “rigid and, I would say, paranoid.” |
| 普京准备走多远，目前还不清楚。法国总统府的一名高级官员形容俄罗斯领导人的讲话既“刻板，而且在我看来，又偏执”。根据政府惯例，此人坚持匿名。 |
| This, he suggested, was in keeping with the man Mr. Macron found at the end of a 20-foot table in the Kremlin earlier this month, and later described to journalists on his plane as more stiff, isolated and ideologically unyielding than at their previous meeting in 2019. |
| 他表示，这个描述与马克龙本月早些时候在克里姆林宫六米长桌尽头看到的那个人是一致的，后来马克龙在飞机上向记者描述，普京比他们在2019年的上次会面中看上去更加死板、孤立，并且在意识形态上决不妥协。 |
| Still, as Polonius put it in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” |
| 尽管如此，正如莎士比亚的《哈姆雷特》中波洛尼厄斯所说，“这些虽然是疯话，却有深意在内。” |
| Mr. Putin, for all his wild imaginings about Ukraine as the “forward springboard” for some American pre-emptive strike against Russia, has been relentlessly building his case against NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and against Western democracies since the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. The estimated 190,000 Russian and separatist troops on the Ukrainian border and in its breakaway regions are only the latest expression of this obsession. |
| 普京一直妄想乌克兰是美国先发制人打击俄罗斯的“前进跳板”，自2008年俄罗斯入侵格鲁吉亚以来，他一直在坚持不懈地反对北约向俄罗斯边境扩张以及反对西方民主国家。在乌克兰边境及其分离地区估计有19万俄罗斯和分离主义军队就是这种执念的最新表现。 |
| The open question is whether Mr. Putin has become weaker or stronger as a result of this drive. |
| 这种推动力使普京变得更弱还是更强，目前尚不清楚。 |
| In some respects he has achieved the opposite of his intentions. American officials argue that he has galvanized and united a NATO alliance that was casting around for a raison d’être. He shifted Ukrainian public opinion decisively against Russia and toward an embrace of NATO and the West. He damaged an already vulnerable, undiversified economy, with Germany’s blocking on Tuesday of the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline just the latest blow. |
| 在某些方面，他取得了与他的意图相反的结果。美国官员表示，普京激发并团结了一个四处寻找存在价值的北约联盟。他使乌克兰的公众舆论果断地转向反对俄罗斯，拥护北约和西方。他破坏了一个本就脆弱、单一的经济体，德国在周二叫停了耗资110亿美元的“北溪2号”天然气管道，这只是最新的打击。 |
| One poll this month in Ukraine by the Rating Group organization found support for NATO membership at a record high 62 percent, up from 55 percent in December. |
| 本月，民意调查机构Rating Group在乌克兰进行的一项调查发现，支持乌克兰加入北约的人数从去年12月的55%上升到62%，达到历史最高水平。 |
| “He has turned Ukraine against Russia,” said Jacques Rupnik, a French political scientist focused on central European countries. “That is quite an achievement.” |
| “他让乌克兰与俄罗斯对立，”关注中欧国家的法国政治学家雅克·鲁普尼克说。“这是一个相当大的成就。” |
| At the same time, however, Mr. Putin has proved effective on several fronts. The humiliated Russia of the immediate post-Cold-War years struts the global stage once more, winning the end game in Syria, working effectively through paramilitary surrogates in Africa, cementing a bond with China. |
| 与此同时，普京已经在几个方面证实了自己的效率。冷战刚结束时曾遭到羞辱的俄罗斯再次登上全球舞台，它在叙利亚赢得了最终胜利，通过在非洲的准军事代理人有效开展工作，还巩固了与中国的关系。 |
| The Russian president has suspended Georgia and Ukraine in strategic limbo through the frozen conflicts he has created there. NATO membership for Georgia is no longer talked about much. Ukraine’s membership seems infinitely distant, almost unimaginable, even to its closest Western allies. |
| 俄罗斯总统通过他在格鲁吉亚和乌克兰制造的“冻结冲突”，将两国置于战略困境中。格鲁吉亚加入北约的问题已不再被广泛讨论。乌克兰的成员国身份似乎遥不可及，甚至对其最亲密的西方盟友来说，也是几乎无法想象的。 |
| In 2013, President Barack Obama decided not to bomb Syria after Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, had crossed an American “red line” against using chemical weapons. Since then, Russia has moved aggressively in the apparent conviction that no provocation outside NATO countries will bring armed American reprisal. |
| 2013年，在叙利亚总统巴沙尔·阿萨德越过美国禁止使用化学武器的“红线”后，奥巴马总统决定不轰炸叙利亚。自那以后，俄罗斯采取了积极行动，显然因为该国确信，针对北约以外国家的任何挑衅都不会招致美国的武装报复。 |
| Mr. Putin’s decision on Monday to recognize the two breakaway regions was the latest example of this probing. Mr. Biden has made clear that no American troops will be sent to die for Ukraine. |
| 普京周一承认这两个分离地区是最新的试探之举。拜登已经明确表示，不会派遣美国军队为乌克兰牺牲。 |
| NATO expansion eastward after the fall of the Berlin Wall was designed to secure and safeguard the freedom of 100 million central Europeans who had escaped the Soviet imperium. It worked. One thing Mr. Putin has not done is threaten Poles or Romanians with renewed Russian subjugation. |
| 柏林墙倒塌后，北约东扩的目的是保障和保护逃离苏联统治的一亿中欧人的自由。它发挥了作用。目前普京还没有威胁波兰人或罗马尼亚人，让他们重新接受俄罗斯的征服。 |
| Its price, however, has been the festering alienation of Russia, which felt it had been betrayed by NATO at its border. This anger was redoubled in 2008 when NATO leaders issued a summit declaration in Bucharest saying that Ukraine and Georgia, once part of the Soviet Union, “will become members of NATO.” They did not say how or when because they did not know — leaving the commitment floating in a sea of treacherous vagueness. |
| 然而，北约所付出的代价是与俄罗斯日益疏远，因为后者认为北约在其边境地区背叛了自己。2008年，让俄罗斯更加愤怒的是，北约领导人在布加勒斯特发表了一份峰会宣言，称曾经属于苏联的乌克兰和格鲁吉亚“将成为北约成员”。北约没有说这将在何时实现，也没有说要怎么做，因为它自己也不知道——这一承诺就这样漂浮在一片模糊莫测的海洋中。 |
| “It was an absolutely disastrous decision,” Mr. Rupnik said. “Either you say you will take Ukraine in by a certain date assuming certain conditions are met, or you say Ukraine’s place is not in NATO and we will devise an alternative strategic framework for the neighborhood between NATO and Russia. This was the worst of both worlds.” |
| “这绝对是一个灾难性的决定，”鲁普尼克说。“要么你说，如果某些条件得到满足，你将在某个日期前接纳乌克兰，要么你说，乌克兰的位置不属于北约，我们将为北约和俄罗斯之间的邻国设计一个替代战略框架。现在是两个世界中最糟糕的情况。” |
| Just how bad is now apparent. Russia’s demand that NATO commit to never admitting Ukraine has been met by the West’s insistence that NATO’s door will remain open, even if nobody is prepared to say how Ukraine would ever squeeze through that door. |
| 情况有多坏现在已经很明显了。俄罗斯要求北约承诺永远不接纳乌克兰，但西方坚持北约的大门将保持敞开，即使没有人准备好说出乌克兰将如何挤进这扇门。 |
| The West has complicated its position in other ways, too. As Marko Milanovic, a professor of international law at the University of Nottingham, pointed out in the European Journal of International Law Blog: “No matter how fantastical some Russian claims may be, the credibility of Western allies in responding to Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty remains deeply undermined, on the law and on the facts, by their own previous misadventures, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” |
| 西方在其他方面也使得自己的立场复杂化。正如诺丁汉大学国际法教授马尔科·米拉诺维奇在《欧洲国际法期刊》博客上指出的那样：“不管俄罗斯的一些说法多么不切实际，西方盟友在回应俄罗斯侵犯乌克兰主权时的可信度，无论是从法律上还是从事实上，都被他们自己之前的错误行为深深损害，包括2003年对伊拉克的入侵。” |
| In the end, Mr. Putin did what he did because he thinks he can get away with it in an unanchored world of growing Great Power rivalry, where American power is no longer determinant and the Russian-Chinese alignment is strong. But hubris is always a danger for a leader as isolated as Mr. Putin appears to be today. |
| 归根结底，普京之所以这么做，是因为他认为，在一个大国竞争日益加剧、美国的力量不再是决定性因素、俄中结盟非常强大的世界里，他做任何事都可以不受惩罚。但是，对于一个像如今的普京这样看上去孤立的领导人来说，自负总是危险的。 |
| The most difficult thing for a communist, it has been observed, is to predict the past. History must be molded to the imperatives of the present. That is what Mr. Putin, the former K.G.B. agent, has tried to do. The coming weeks will tell if Ukrainian anger, rediscovered NATO unity, and American determination can stop his attempt to reverse the consequences of Soviet unraveling. |
| 据观察，对于一个共产主义者来说，最困难的事情是预测过去。历史必须按照当前的需要来塑造。这就是前克格勃特工普京试图做的事情。接下来的几周将会告诉我们，乌克兰的愤怒、北约重新到来的团结以及美国的决心，是否能够阻止他扭转苏联解体后果的企图。 |
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