In early 2017, American intelligence agencies delivered an unequivocal judgment about why President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had ordered a sprawling effort to sabotage the recent American presidential election.

2017年初，对于俄罗斯总统普京为何下令大规模破坏前不久的美国总统大选，美国情报机构做出了明确的判断。

Mr. Putin wanted to cripple the faith Americans have in their own elections, they found, and to undermine a United States-led “liberal world order” that the Russians see as a threat to their security. As a way to achieve this goal, the assessment found, Russia worked to help Donald J. Trump win the election.

他们发现，普京想削弱美国人对自己的选举的信心，并破坏美国领导的“自由世界秩序”，俄罗斯人视这一秩序为安全威胁。评估发现，为了实现这一目标，俄罗斯努力帮助特朗普赢得大选。

Eight years later, Mr. Trump sat in the Oval Office for a blustery meeting with President Voldymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and rendered, once again, his own judgment on that period. There was no Russian sabotage, just a “phony witch hunt” of which both he and Mr. Putin were victims.

八年后，特朗普坐在椭圆形办公室与乌克兰总统泽连斯基进行了一场激烈的会晤，并再次对那段时期做出了自己的判断。没有什么俄罗斯的破坏，那只是一场“虚假的政治迫害”，他和普京都是受害者。

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” he said.

“让我告诉你，普京和我一起经历了很多，”他说。

The statement was a tell. The president sees common cause with Mr. Putin, a merging of interests forged through battles against those he believes are his and Mr. Putin’s mutual adversaries — including Democratic lawmakers, European leaders and a spectral “deep state” inside the U.S. government.

这句话是一种暗示。总统认为自己和普京有共同事业，在与他心目中两人的共同对手斗争的过程中，他与普京形成了利益融合——这些对手包括民主党议员、欧洲领导人和美国政府内部一股神秘的“深层势力”。

The relationship between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin has for years been scrutinized by American government inquiries, assessments by foreign intelligence services and news media investigations. Taken together, they have unearthed evidence to support an array of theories addressing Mr. Trump’s affinity for a Russian strongman who has spent a career trying to undermine American interests.

多年来，特朗普和普京之间的关系一直受到美国政府的调查、外国情报机构的评估和新闻媒体调查的密切关注。综合起来，他们发现的证据支持了一系列关于特朗普与一名俄罗斯铁腕人物关系密切的理论，这名铁腕人物在其职业生涯中一直试图损害美国的利益。

As yet, there is no single, tidy explanation. But based solely on Mr. Trump’s public actions during his first six weeks back in office, the simple fact is that he has made few decisions on national security or foreign policy that have not been cheered by the Kremlin, making his stance toward Mr. Putin more consequential than ever.

到目前为止，还没有一个统一、严谨的解释。但单从特朗普上任前六周的公开行动来看，一个简单的事实是，他在国家安全或外交政策方面做出的决定几乎没有哪一个不受克里姆林宫的欢迎，这使得他对普京的立场比以往任何时候都更加重要。

This is a world turned upside down for Susan Miller, the former head of counterintelligence at the C.I.A., who led the agency’s 2017 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference.

对于前中央情报局反情报部门负责人苏珊·米勒来说，世界已经天翻地覆，她领导了该机构2017年对俄罗斯干预选举的情报评估。

Ms. Miller said in an interview that she thinks Mr. Trump’s affinity for the Russian president boils down to “autocrat envy”— that he covets the power Mr. Putin has to make decisions in Russia without any constraints.

米勒在接受采访时表示，她认为特朗普对俄罗斯总统的亲近归根结底是“对专制统治者的嫉妒”——他羡慕普京在俄罗斯拥有不受任何约束地做出决定的权力。

“Trump likes Putin because Putin has control over his country,” she said. “And Trump wants control over his country.”

“特朗普喜欢普京，因为普京可以控制他的国家，”她说。“而特朗普想要控制他的国家。”

Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Zelensky of beginning the war that started with a Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a war that has seen the mass slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. He has stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine that the country desperately needs to battle Russian forces.

特朗普指责泽连斯基挑起了这场以俄罗斯于2022年2月入侵乌克兰为开端的战争，这场战争导致乌克兰平民遭到大规模屠杀。他已经停止与乌克兰分享情报，而乌克兰迫切需要这些情报来对抗俄罗斯军队。

特朗普指责乌克兰总统泽连斯基挑起了这场始于2022年2月俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的战争。

He has gutted American foreign aid programs that Mr. Putin has long detested, including pro-democracy programs in countries like Hungary that Russia is bringing closer into its sphere of influence. He has sidelined European allies, saying they are untrustworthy and suggesting they might have to fend for themselves in the future.

他破坏了普京向来厌恶的美国对外援助项目，包括在匈牙利等国实施的支持民主计划，俄罗斯正在把这些国家拉进自己的势力范围。他把欧洲盟友撇在一边，说他们不值得信任，并暗示他们未来可能不得不自力更生。

Mr. Trump has defended his actions in part by saying they are necessary steps to getting Russia to the negotiating table, casting himself as a peace broker to end the war in Ukraine. Thus far, however, he has pushed far harder on Mr. Zelensky to make concessions than he has on Mr. Putin.

特朗普为自己的部分行动进行辩护，说它们是让俄罗斯坐到谈判桌前的必要步骤，他把自己塑造成结束乌克兰战争的和平斡旋者。然而，到目前为止，他逼迫泽连斯基做出让步的力度远远大于对普京施压的力度。

How much does all this please Russian officials? Just ask them.

这一切能在多大程度上取悦俄罗斯官员？不妨直接去问他们。

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s longtime spokesman, went on state television two days after the Oval Office blowup with Mr. Zelensky and praised the Trump administration’s decisions since coming to power. The new White House agenda, he said, “largely aligns with our vision.”

泽连斯基在椭圆形办公室与总统发生争执两天后，克里姆林宫长期以来的发言人德米特里·佩斯科夫在国家电视台上对特朗普政府上台以来的决定表示赞扬。他说，白宫的新议程“在很大程度上与我们的愿景一致”。

That same day, Sergey V. Lavrov, Mr. Putin’s foreign minister, presented Russians with a wholly different take on world history than the one that Kremlin officials have taught for decades. Mr. Lavrov said it was European nations, not the United States, that were responsible for so many of history’s great tragedies — citing the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars, World War I and the rise of Hitler.

就在同一天，普京的外交部长拉夫罗夫向俄罗斯人展示了一种完全不同于克里姆林宫官员几十年来传播的世界历史观点。拉夫罗夫列举了十字军东征、拿破仑战争、第一次世界大战和希特勒的崛起，他说，是欧洲国家，而不是美国，对历史上如此多的重大悲剧负有责任。

“If we look at history in retrospect,” he said, “the Americans did not play any instigating, let alone incendiary, role.”

“回顾历史，”他说，“美国人没有扮演煽动角色，更不用说挑起事端。”

Ms. Miller said there was no doubt among members of her counterintelligence team about Russia’s intentions in disrupting the 2016 election: to spread disinformation and sow chaos with the aim of undermining confidence in the democratic process.

米勒表示，她的反情报团队成员对俄罗斯扰乱2016年大选的意图毫不怀疑，他们旨在传播虚假信息，制造混乱，目的是破坏对民主进程的信心。

At the same time, she said, her agency team — which was joined by officials from the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. — was extremely careful and fiercely nonpartisan in assessing what impact the Russian interference had on Mr. Trump’s election victory.

她说，与此同时，她的部门——还有来自国家安全局和联邦调查局的官员——在评估俄罗斯干预对特朗普胜选的影响时非常谨慎，而且严格遵守无党派原则。

Nevertheless, during the first Trump administration she found herself in the cross hairs of the team of prosecutors led by John Durham, whom Attorney General William P. Barr had appointed to investigate the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia investigation. She said that Mr. Durham and other prosecutors grilled her for more than eight hours about the intelligence assessment.

然而，在特朗普第一届政府期间，她意外成了约翰·达勒姆领导的检察官团队的目标，司法部长威廉·巴尔任命达勒姆调查联邦调查局对俄罗斯调查的起源。她说，达勒姆和其他检察官就情报评估对她进行了长达八个多小时的盘问。

在特朗普和泽连斯基在椭圆形办公室激烈的新闻发布会之后，外交部长拉夫罗夫等俄罗斯官员对特朗普政府作出了积极回应。

“They were looking for bias in our work,” Ms. Miller said. “They didn’t find any.” Mr. Durham’s final report found no fault with the 2017 intelligence assessment.

“他们在寻找我们工作中的偏见，”米勒说。“他们什么也没找到。”达勒姆的最终报告没有发现2017年的情报评估有任何问题。

Still, Mr. Trump’s anger about what he calls the “Russia hoax” has festered for years, a grievance so deep he now sees Mr. Putin as his ally in victimhood.

尽管如此，特朗普对他所谓的“俄罗斯骗局”的愤怒多年来一直在恶化，这种不满如此之深，以至于他现在把普京视为自己的受害者盟友。

Mr. Putin has spent years trying to shape Mr. Trump’s thinking on Ukraine, and there is now little daylight between both men’s public statements about the war.

普京多年来一直试图影响特朗普对乌克兰的看法，现在两人关于这场战争的公开声明几乎没有什么分歧。

The first time that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin met in person, during a July 2017 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the Russian president used much of the time disparaging Ukraine as a corrupt, fabricated country.

2017年7月，特朗普和普京在德国汉堡举行的峰会上首次会面时，俄罗斯总统用大量时间贬低乌克兰是一个腐败的、凭空捏造的国家。

He said that Russia had every right to exert influence over Ukraine. He even justified Russian military operations in the country by raising the historical example of President Theodore Roosevelt’s belief that the United States had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries.

他说俄罗斯完全有权对乌克兰施加影响。他甚至以西奥多·罗斯福总统认为美国有权干涉拉丁美洲国家内政的历史为例，为俄罗斯在该国的军事行动辩护。

Mr. Trump is a longtime admirer of Roosevelt.

特朗普一直都很崇拜罗斯福。

Leaving the meeting, Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, told anxious White House aides that Mr. Putin had done his “K.G.B. shtick,” and that Mr. Trump had not pushed back on any of the Russian president’s assertions about Ukraine.

离开会场时，时任国务卿蒂勒森告诉焦虑的白宫助手，普京完成了他的“克格勃伎俩”，特朗普没有就俄罗斯总统关于乌克兰的任何说法提出反驳。

More than two years later, the House impeached Mr. Trump because of a July 2019 phone call he had with Mr. Zelensky, during which he made continued American military support to Ukraine contingent on Mr. Zelensky’s helping dig up dirt on his political opponents.

两年多后，众议院弹劾了特朗普，原因是他在2019年7月与泽连斯基通了电话，在电话中，特朗普表示，美国对乌克兰的持续军事支持要取决于泽连斯基是否能够帮助挖掘特朗普政治对手的丑闻。

The episode further radicalized Mr. Trump’s views not only toward Ukraine but also to his perceived “deep state” enemies who testified during the impeachment proceedings.

这一事件不仅进一步激化了特朗普对乌克兰的看法，也让他对弹劾程序中作证的那些所谓“深层政府”敌人的看法变得更加激进。