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| WASHINGTON — As President Biden tells the story, he was blunt with Vladimir V. Putin during a meeting in Moscow more than a decade ago. “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul,” Mr. Biden recalled telling the K.G.B. veteran. Mr. Putin smiled. “We understand one another,” he said. |
| 华盛顿——按照拜登总统的描述，十多年前，他在莫斯科与普京见面时表现得相当直率。“我看着你的眼睛，觉得你没有灵魂，”拜登回忆自己曾这样对那位资深克格勃特工说。普京报以微笑。“我们彼此了解，”他说。 |
| Now, as the United States seeks to rally the world to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin, the Russian president, are testing their understandings of one another as never before, trying to anticipate and outmaneuver each other with the fate of millions of people in the balance. |
| 如今，在美国寻求团结全世界反对俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的时候，拜登与俄罗斯总统普京正在以前所未有的方式检验他们对彼此的了解，在数百万人的命运未定之际，他们试图预测对方，让自己在谋略上胜出一筹。 |
| Not since John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev squared off over Berlin and Cuba have an American president and Russian leader gone eyeball to eyeball in quite such a dramatic fashion. While the two nuclear states are not poised for war directly with each other, as they were six decades ago, the showdown between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin nonetheless holds enormous consequences for the world order that may be felt for years to come. |
| 自肯尼迪与赫鲁晓夫在柏林和古巴问题上针锋相对以来，还没有哪位美国总统和俄罗斯领导人以如此引人注目的方式直接对峙。尽管这两个有核国家没有像60年前那样准备直接开战，但拜登与普京一决胜负的较量仍将对世界秩序产生巨大影响，也许在未来相当一段时间都能感受到。 |
| Mr. Biden has denounced Mr. Putin as “the aggressor” for invading Ukraine and vowed to make him “a pariah on the international stage.” To that end, Mr. Biden decided on Friday to impose sanctions on Mr. Putin himself, targeting him personally in a way that never happened even during the Cold War. Mr. Putin, for his part, is testing Mr. Biden’s mettle at a time when the Russians have concluded that the United States is divided and distracted at home, leaving little room for consensus. |
| 拜登谴责普京是入侵乌克兰的“侵略者”，并誓言要让他在“国际舞台上陷于孤立”。为此，拜登周五决定对普京本人实施制裁，这种将普京个人作为制裁目标的做法，即使在冷战时期也从未有过。就普京而言，他正在试探拜登的底线，眼下俄罗斯人认定，目前美国国内分裂、自顾不暇、几乎没有达成共识的空间。 |
| “They’re coming from two different planets and it’s difficult to see where that intersects,” said Frank Lowenstein, who was on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Mr. Biden was its chairman. Mr. Biden believes in the rules-based system that Mr. Putin is trying to tear down. “He almost seems to personify the old order of things,” Mr. Lowenstein said of the president, “whereas Putin in some ways personifies the new lack of order.” |
| “他们来自两个不同的世界，很难看到有交集，”弗兰克·洛温斯坦说道，他曾在拜登担任参议院外交关系委员会主席时在该委员会工作。拜登信奉的是基于规则的全球体系，而普京正在试图推翻这个体系。“他几乎就是事物旧秩序的化身，”洛温斯坦在谈到这位美国总统时说，“而普京在某些方面则代表着秩序新的缺失。” |
| Over the last few weeks, Mr. Biden has spent endless hours with advisers and intelligence officials trying to figure out what is in Mr. Putin’s head and how to influence his calculations — without success so far. |
| 在过去几周里，拜登与顾问和情报官员们耗费大量时间，试图搞清楚普京脑袋里究竟在想什么，以及如何影响普京的算计，但至今尚未成功。 |
| The Russian leader has long harbored bitterness about Ukraine and denied that it was genuinely an independent state, but briefers told Mr. Biden that Mr. Putin seemed to grow more extreme in his thinking during his isolation over the last two years amid the coronavirus pandemic. |
| 这位俄罗斯领导人长期以来一直对乌克兰心怀怨恨，他否认乌克兰是一个真正的独立国家，而工作人员告诉拜登，在因新冠疫情而与世隔绝的两年里，普京的思想似乎已变得更加极端了。 |
| More than most world leaders, Mr. Putin has been a virtual recluse, keeping distant even from his own circle, as dramatized by video images in recent days of him sitting far across a room from other Russian officials or visiting foreign leaders. After more than two decades in power and nearing his 70th birthday, Mr. Putin has seemed more focused lately on his legacy, Mr. Biden’s team has told the president. |
| 与大多数世界领导人相比，普京几乎处于隐居状态，甚至与自己的核心圈子都保持着距离，这在最近几天他与其他俄罗斯官员或来访的外国领导人见面时，远远坐在房间另一头的画面中得到了戏剧性的呈现。拜登的团队告诉他，在掌权20多年、年近七旬之际，普京近来似乎更关心自己的政治遗产。 |
| American officials are debating whether Mr. Putin has become unbalanced. “I wish I could share more, but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and has access to some of the same intelligence as the president, wrote on Twitter on Friday night. |
| 美国官员正在争论普京是否心理出现问题。“我但愿我能分享更多信息，但现在只能说，对很多人来说，#普京明显有点不对劲，”佛罗里达州参议员马可·卢比奥周五晚在Twitter上写道。卢比奥是参议员情报委员会职位最高的共和党人，有接触到总统级别情报的权限。 |
| As Russian troops gathered near the Ukrainian border, Mr. Biden sought to engage Mr. Putin by getting on the telephone with him and sending every envoy he could to meet with any Russian official who would talk, but his call went nowhere and so did the other discussions. |
| 随着俄军在乌克兰边境附近集结，拜登试图通过电话与普京交谈，还派了他所能派的所有特使，与任何愿意对话的俄罗斯官员会面。但他的电话一无所获，其他讨论也毫无进展。 |
| The challenge is this: If Mr. Putin, in the later stages of his reign, is trying to rewrite history by reversing what he sees as the injustice of the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and rebuilding the old empire, then traditional tools of deterrence and diplomacy may not be enough to get him to abandon such a messianic mission. |
| 挑战在于，如果普京在自己掌权的末期，试图扭转他所认为的苏联1991年解体的不公正，重建旧帝国，并以此改写历史的话，那么传统的威慑和外交手段也许都不足以让他放弃这个救世般狂热的使命。 |
| So Mr. Biden in recent weeks has emphasized solidarity with Europe to restore the unity of the trans-Atlantic alliance that frayed under President Donald J. Trump, who regularly criticized America’s friends more than he did Mr. Putin. That diplomatic spadework led both sides of the Atlantic to decide on Friday to target Mr. Putin himself by going after his money held abroad. |
| 所以，拜登最近几周一直强调与欧洲齐心协力，恢复跨大西洋联盟的团结，该联盟在特朗普担任总统期间受损，后者对美国盟友的批评远多于对普京的批评。经过了外交准备工作，大西洋两岸的政府周五决定将普京本人作为制裁目标，追查他在海外的资金。 |
| Mr. Biden is the fifth American president to deal with Mr. Putin, but the first to enter office with a history of involvement in setting policy toward Russia from his time as a senator and vice president. Unlike the previous four presidents, who each to different degrees hoped to forge better ties with Moscow, Mr. Biden never harbored illusions about making friends with Mr. Putin’s Russia, advisers said. |
| 拜登是与普京打交道的第五位美国总统，也是首位在上任之初就在对俄政策上拥有丰富经验的美国总统，他在担任参议员和副总统期间参与制定过对俄政策。他的顾问表示，与之前四位在不同程度上希望改善对俄关系的总统不同，拜登从未对与普京领导下的俄罗斯交朋友抱有幻想。 |
| But he did aspire to establish a “stable, predictable relationship” with a tend-the-garden strategy of paying just enough attention to Mr. Putin to make him feel respected without wasting time on grand diplomacy that would never work, an approach that would allow Mr. Biden to focus on China. |
| 但他确实希望建立“稳定、可预测的美俄关系”，他采取了种菜园子的策略，即对普京给予足够关注，让他感觉自己受到了尊重，但不把时间浪费在永远不会奏效的宏大外交上，这种做法让拜登能把精力集中在中国问题上。 |
| In the face of a previous Russian troop buildup near Ukraine last spring, Mr. Biden agreed to a summit meeting with Mr. Putin in Geneva over the objection of some advisers who worried it was rewarding the Kremlin leader, who as it turned out was more intent on an unstable and unpredictable relationship. |
| 去年春天俄罗斯向乌克兰附近增兵时，尽管一些顾问表示反对，担心这是对普京的鼓励，但拜登还是同意与这位克里姆林宫领导人在日内瓦峰会上会晤。事实证明，普京意图建立的其实是不稳定和不可预知的美俄关系。 |
| If Mr. Biden underestimated his counterpart, Mr. Putin may have done the same. Perhaps influenced by the chaotic American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, Mr. Putin knew that the United States had no appetite to commit forces to Ukraine and may have calculated that Mr. Biden would not otherwise strongly resist Russian aggression, according to American and Russian analysts. |
| 如果说拜登低估了他的对手，普京可能也是如此。美俄两国分析人士表示，或许是看到去年夏天美国在阿富汗的混乱撤军，让普京明白美国无意向乌克兰出兵，而且有可能推测，拜登不会强烈抵制俄罗斯的侵略之举。 |
| But while some critics believe he should be even tougher, Mr. Biden was unrelenting in calling out Mr. Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine in recent weeks and has rallied European allies into a more or less common front. |
| 虽然一些批评人士认为拜登应该拿出更强硬的态度，但他在最近几周毫不留情地抨击普京入侵乌克兰的计划，还是将欧洲盟友多多少少团结到了一条统一战线上。 |
| “Like Kennedy and Khrushchev, they’re such polar opposites in many way but they also share an understanding of the Cold War,” said Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of the Soviet leader, who now teaches at the New School in New York. “And I think they do understand each other.” |
| “与肯尼迪和赫鲁晓夫一样，虽然拜登和普京在很多方面截然不同，但他们对冷战有相同的理解，”赫鲁晓夫的曾孙女尼娜·赫鲁晓娃说，她目前在纽约的新学院(New School)任教。“而且我认为他们确实了解彼此。” |
| Still, she added that they both may have miscalculated in thinking that their familiarity would lead to concessions when neither was actually in a position to deliver what the other really wanted. Mr. Biden wanted Mr. Putin to basically stay in his box and Mr. Putin wanted to expand the size of his box. |
| 尽管如此，赫鲁晓娃补充说，他们也许都做出了错误的估计，认为彼此的熟悉会带来让步，而实际上，双方都没有能力提供对方真正想要的东西。拜登想让普京基本上待在自己的框子里，而普京则想扩大他的框子。 |
| They are both children of the Cold War, raised, educated and married in an era when the specter of a planet-ending conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union hovered over everything. Yet they emerged from that twilight struggle with radically different views of how it ended, one celebrating it as a victory for freedom and democracy, the other mourning it as a disaster for his nation and people. |
| 他们都是属于冷战时代的人，美苏之间终结世界的冲突的幽灵笼罩在他们成长、接受教育、成家立业过程中的所有方面。然而，当他们走出那场冷战热斗时，对其结局却有着截然不同的看法，拜登把这个结局作为自由和民主的胜利来庆祝，普京却把其作为国家和人民的灾难来哀悼。 |
| They both come from modest upbringings and are products of their disparate systems, but they rose to power along distinct paths. Mr. Biden, 79, is a backslapping politician who relies on the force of his upbeat personality to drive diplomacy while Mr. Putin, 69, is a dour former intelligence agent who nurses resentments and conspiracy theories. |
| 虽然他们都出身平凡，是两种差异巨大的制度的产物，但他们掌权的道路截然不同。现年79岁的拜登是友好热情的政客，靠乐观个性的力量来推动外交，而现年69岁的普京则是不苟言笑的前情报官员，心藏怨恨和阴谋论。 |
| Mr. Putin never talks about his family, while Mr. Biden can hardly stop talking about his. Mr. Putin spent no time in elective politics before being plucked out of obscurity to succeed Boris N. Yeltsin, while Mr. Biden spent a lifetime running for office. They each have a penchant for macho exhibitionism, Mr. Putin posing for pictures shirtless or with tigers and Mr. Biden showing off his muscle cars and boasting that he would like to beat up Mr. Trump. |
| 普京从不谈论自己的家庭，拜登则几乎不停地谈论他的家庭。在从一个默默无闻者被提携为叶利钦的接班人之前，普京在选举政治上没花过任何时间，而拜登一辈子的时间都花在竞选公职上。他们都有表现大男子气概的嗜好，普京或光着上身或与老虎拍照，拜登则炫耀他的“肌肉车”，吹嘘自己想揍特朗普。 |
| “Biden’s a retail politician and Putin is from the covert security services who runs with a mafia-like inner circle,” said Heather A. Conley, the president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a group that promotes trans-Atlantic relations. “Putin’s vision is of a grievance-filled history that he is seeking to overturn, and President Biden’s history is of an American victory at the end of the Cold War and the positive power of alliances and freedom and democracy.” |
| “拜登是靠直接与选民接触的竞选活动拉选票的政客，普京则来自隐蔽的安全部门，靠一个黑手党似的核心集团来运作，”致力于促进跨大西洋关系的美国德国马歇尔基金会主席希瑟·康利说。“普京眼里的历史充满了怨恨，他正在寻求将之推翻，而拜登眼里的历史是美国在冷战结束时取得的胜利，以及联盟、自由、民主的积极力量。” |
| For a time, American presidents thought they could make common cause with Mr. Putin. After he took over as prime minister in 1999 and president in 2000, Mr. Putin seemed determined to bring Russia into the West, aligning himself with President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and even welcoming American troops into former Soviet territory. In 2002, he said that the Baltic republics had every right to join NATO if they wanted to. |
| 在一段时间里，美国的几位总统曾认为，他们可以与普京合作。在1999年担任俄罗斯总理、2000年担任俄罗斯总统之后，普京似乎决心把俄罗斯带进西方，2001年9月11日恐怖袭击后，他公开支持小布什总统，甚至欢迎美国军队进入苏联以前的领土。他曾在2002年说，如果波罗的海国家愿意，它们完全有权加入北约。 |
| But after the Rose Revolution in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 brought to power pro-Western governments, Mr. Putin suspected the uprisings were American-sponsored dress rehearsals for a plot to take him out. While objecting to the Iraq war, he still cared enough about international approval to host the Group of 8 powers at a specially rebuilt palace outside St. Petersburg in 2006. But by the next year, he broke with the West in a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference blasting the American-led order. |
| 但在前苏联加盟共和国格鲁吉亚2003年发生了“玫瑰革命”、2004年乌克兰的“橙色革命”让亲西方的政府上台后，普京起了疑心，觉得这些起义是美国支持的阴谋的预演，最终目的是推翻他。尽管他反对伊拉克战争，但他仍对国际社会的认可足够在意，专门修复了圣彼得堡郊外的一个宫殿，为2006年的八国集团峰会做东。但到次年，他已与西方分道扬镳，在慕尼黑安全会议上发表了一篇言辞激烈的讲话，抨击美国主导的秩序。 |
| Mr. Putin’s war with Georgia in 2008 and annexation of Crimea and sponsorship of separatist uprisings in Ukraine in 2014 signaled a revanchist strategy of undoing the Soviet collapse, which he termed the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. And after he concluded that street protests against him in 2011 were somehow the work of Hillary Clinton, he authorized a clandestine operation to help defeat her in 2016 and elect Mr. Trump. |
| 普京2008年对格鲁吉亚的战争，以及在2014年吞并克里米亚、支持乌克兰分离主义者起义的做法，标志着他为逆转苏联解体所采取的复仇主义战略，他曾把苏联解体称为20世纪“最大的地缘政治灾难”。认定2011年爆发的针对他的街头抗议是希拉里·克林顿的杰作之后，普京授权一项秘密行动，目的是促成希拉里在2016年大选中落败和特朗普当选。 |
| Mr. Biden has a long history with Russian officials as well. In 1979, as a senator, he met with the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, and when he became President Barack Obama’s vice president, Mr. Biden was the one who suggested the two sides “press the reset button.” But after tensions rose, he was assigned to lead support for Ukraine, putting him at odds with Mr. Putin. |
| 拜登与俄罗斯官员的往来也有很长的历史。1979年，他曾以参议员的身份与时任苏联领导人勃列日涅夫见面。担任奥巴马政府的副总统后，拜登是建议双方在两国关系上“按重启按钮”的人。但在紧张局势加剧后，他被指派领导支持乌克兰的工作，让他与普京发生了分歧。 |
| When he visited Moscow in 2011, Mr. Biden held what he described as a contentious meeting with Mr. Putin, who at the time held the position of prime minister again but was still the country’s paramount leader. |
| 拜登2011年访问莫斯科时，与普京举行了被拜登描述为争论不休的会晤，普京当时再次出任总理，但仍是俄罗斯的最高领导人。 |
| “Putin was ice-cold calm throughout, but argumentative from start to finish,” Mr. Biden recalled in a memoir. He wrote that he told Mr. Putin about his efforts to keep Georgia’s hotheaded leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, from antagonizing Moscow. |
| “普京在整个会晤期间冷静如冰，但自始至终都爱争论，”拜登在自传中回忆。他写道自己告诉普京，他在努力阻止格鲁吉亚急躁的领导人米哈伊尔·萨卡什维利惹恼莫斯科。 |
| “I speak to Saakashvili regularly on the phone and I urge him not to take provocative actions, just as I urge you to restore Georgia’s sovereignty,” Mr. Biden said. |
| “我和萨卡什维利经常通电话，我敦促他不要采取挑衅行动，就像我敦促你们恢复格鲁吉亚的主权一样，”拜登写道。 |
| “Oh,” replied Mr. Putin, the old spy, “we know exactly what you say to Mr. Saakashvili on the phone.” |
| “哦，”老间谍普京回答说，“我们完全清楚你在电话里对萨卡什维利说了什么。” |
| Whether Mr. Biden actually told the Russian leader that he had no soul at this meeting or embellished the story as some suspect, the point was that the vice president was trying to distinguish himself from Mr. Bush’s famous comment that he “was able to get a sense of his soul” upon first meeting Mr. Putin. |
| 无论拜登是否在那次碰面中真地对俄罗斯领导人直言他没有灵魂，还是像有些人怀疑的那样对这件事添油加醋，时任副总统的拜登想说的一点是，他试图将自己与小布什的一句名言区别开来，小布什第一次与普京见面后说了“能够对他的灵魂有所了解”的话。 |
| John R. Beyrle, who was the United States ambassador at the time and sat in on Mr. Biden’s meeting with the Russian leader, recalled that Mr. Putin delighted in throwing the Americans off guard with a surprise proposal to loosen visa rules between the two countries, but otherwise it was “just a plain vanilla meeting.” |
| 拜登与俄罗斯领导人普京会晤时，时任美国驻俄罗斯大使的约翰·拜尔利在座，他回忆说，普京很高兴自己用两国放宽签证规定的意外提议让美国人一时哑口无言，除此之外，那“只是一次平凡无奇的会晤”。 |
| “I don’t even remember the chemistry or the body language being terrible,” he said. But Mr. Putin was not oozing in warmth, he said: “Talk about expressionless. Very controlled guy.” It was a contrast with Mr. Biden. “Obviously, they’re very different people,” Mr. Beyrle said. |
| “我甚至不记得他们两人的反应，或他们的肢体语言有什么不愉快的表现，”拜尔利说。但他表示，普京并未流露出热情的表现：“那才叫面无表情。（他是）非常能自控的人。”这与拜登形成对比。“显然，他们是非常不同的人，”拜尔利说。 |
| A decade later, the two men who thought they understood each other find themselves on opposite sides of a collision that is shaking the world. |
| 十年后，这两位自以为了解对方的人，发现自己站在了一场震撼世界的冲突的两端。 |
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