As President Trump looked ahead this week to his high-profile, high-risk meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, he reflected momentarily on the curious and confusing relationship between the two men. “I got along well with Putin,” he said.

本周，特朗普总统展望即将与俄罗斯总统普京备受瞩目且风险极高的会面时，短暂回顾了两人之间既奇特又令人困惑的关系。“以前我和普京相处得很好，”他说。

Intriguingly, he used the past tense. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has expressed rare frustration over the Russian leader’s unwillingness to make peace in Ukraine. But as the president elaborated earlier this week, he sounded eager to switch back to the present tense when the two sit down in Alaska on Friday.

耐人寻味的是，他用的是过去时。过去几周，特朗普罕见地对这位俄罗斯领导人不愿在乌克兰实现和平表达了不满。但正如总统本周早些时候详细阐述的那样，他似乎渴望在周五两人于阿拉斯加会面时将这句话的时态换回现在时。

Mr. Trump’s affinity for the iron-fisted master of the Kremlin has perplexed much of the political and diplomatic world for the past decade, challenging assumptions, fueling investigations, reshaping elections and upending alliances. Now the relationship faces its most critical test as Mr. Trump seeks to broker a halt to the war in Ukraine: Is he ready to put serious pressure on his Russian counterpart? Will Mr. Putin again win over the president to his way of thinking? Or is their friendship really on the rocks?

过去十年，特朗普对这位克里姆林宫铁腕人物的亲近态度让大部分政治和外交界人士感到困惑，这挑战了人们的固有假设、引发了诸多调查、重塑了选举格局，还颠覆了联盟关系。如今，当特朗普试图促成乌克兰战争停火时，这段关系面临着最关键的考验：他是否准备向俄罗斯领导人施加真正的压力？普京会再次说服总统认同他的想法吗？还是说，他们的友谊真的岌岌可危了？

For all of his recent complaints about Russian intransigence and demands that the war stop, Mr. Trump has still largely held back from harsh criticism of Mr. Putin personally, preferring to use words like “disappointed” and “not happy.” He has aimed his sharpest broadsides instead at Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former caretaker president who has engaged in belligerent talk, a way of avoiding going after Mr. Putin more directly.

尽管特朗普最近对俄罗斯的不妥协颇有怨言，并要求停止战争，但他在很大程度上仍避免对普京本人进行严厉批评，更倾向于使用“失望”“不高兴”这类词语。他将最尖锐的抨击对准了发表好战言辞的前过渡总统德米特里·梅德韦杰夫，这样做是为了避免更为直接地针对普京。

And in recent days, Mr. Trump has seemed to pivot back to his posture from earlier in the year, when he directed more blame for the war on Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, even though it was Mr. Putin who invaded his neighbor in the first place and has rejected American proposals for an unconditional cease-fire.

而且，近几天来，特朗普似乎回归年初立场，当时他将战争的更多责任归咎于乌克兰总统泽连斯基，尽管是普京首先入侵了邻国，并且拒绝了美国提出的无条件停火提议。

2月，特朗普在椭圆形办公室斥责乌克兰总统泽连斯基。最近几天，特朗普将战争的责任更多地归咎于乌克兰。

“Putin clearly pushed the envelope beyond what Trump was willing to take, and that explains why in the past month or six weeks you’ve seen increasingly negative comments about Putin,” John R. Bolton, a national security adviser to Mr. Trump in his first term and now a vocal critic, said in an interview. “His friend isn’t helping him out here. He’s not getting to a deal.”

“普京显然越过了特朗普能接受的底线，这就解释了为什么在过去一个月或一个半月的时间里，你看到他对普京的负面评价越来越多，”特朗普第一任期内的国家安全顾问约翰·博尔顿在接受采访时表示，他如今是特朗普直言不讳的批评者。“他的朋友在这件事上没有帮他。他没法达成协议。”

But Mr. Bolton said Mr. Trump clearly has not given up on his friend. By inviting Mr. Putin to American soil despite U.S. sanctions and an international arrest warrant for war crimes, he said, Mr. Trump has rewarded the Russian leader, effectively freeing him from the international isolation box established by Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and European leaders.

但博尔顿称，特朗普显然没有放弃他的这位朋友。他说，尽管美国对普京实施了制裁，而且国际刑事法院已对普京签发战争罪逮捕令，特朗普仍邀请普京到访美国本土，这是对这位俄罗斯领导人的奖赏，实际上是把他从特朗普的前任拜登总统和欧洲领导人建立的国际孤立中解救了出来。

“He just doesn’t know enough to not get played,” Mr. Bolton said of Mr. Trump. “He wants to get along. He thinks he’s friends with Putin. I don’t think Putin thinks he’s friends with him. Putin’s as coldblooded as they come.”

“他缺乏避免被操纵的政治智慧，”博尔顿这样评价特朗普。“他想搞好关系。他认为自己和普京是朋友。但我觉得普京可不认为自己跟他是朋友。普京是个冷血至极的人。”

Longtime analysts of the U.S.-Russian relationship said that Mr. Trump’s recent words of exasperation do not signal a real break with Mr. Putin, at least not yet.

长期研究美俄关系的分析人士表示，特朗普最近流露的恼怒言辞并不意味着他与普京真正决裂，至少目前还没有。

“I don’t think there has been any meaningful shift in Trump’s views of Putin or his desire to achieve a reset,” said Angela E. Stent, a national intelligence officer on Russia during President George W. Bush’s administration. “It is true that he did express frustration with Putin and praise for Zelensky a few weeks ago, but that seems to have evaporated once he realized that Putin would not agree to anything before Trump’s imposed deadline” for a cease-fire.

“我不认为特朗普对普京的看法，或者他想要重置美俄关系的愿望出现了任何实质性转变，”乔治·W·布什总统执政期间负责俄罗斯事务的国家情报官员安吉拉·斯滕特说。“的确，几周前他确实表达了对普京的不满，并赞扬了泽连斯基，但一旦他意识到普京不会在他设定的停火最后期限前同意任何事情，这种态度似乎就消失了。”

Michael A. McFaul, who was ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, said he was struck by Mr. Trump’s momentary shift in tone a few weeks ago. “But lately he has drifted back to his old self,” he said, “again blaming Zelensky in part for Putin’s invasion, not entertaining Zelensky’s proposal for a trilateral meeting, and already suggesting that Zelensky is going to have to make major concessions, but saying nothing about what concessions need to be made by Putin.”

曾在奥巴马政府担任美国驻俄大使的迈克尔·麦克福尔说，几周前特朗普语气的短暂转变引起了他的注意。“但最近他的言论又变回了老样子，”他说，“再次将普京入侵的部分责任归咎于泽连斯基，拒绝考虑泽连斯基提出的三方会面提议，而且暗示泽连斯基将不得不做出重大让步，却对普京需要做出哪些让步只字不提。”

6月，乌克兰顿涅茨克地区前线附近遭俄军袭击后的景象。

The meeting in Alaska will be Mr. Putin’s first visit to the United States outside of the United Nations since 2007, when Mr. Bush invited him to his family’s compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. After multiple phone calls and forays by his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump said he wanted to get in the same room with Mr. Putin to break the logjam.

此次在阿拉斯加的会面将是普京自2007年以来首次在联合国之外的场合访问美国。当时布什还曾邀请他前往缅因州肯纳邦克波特的家族庄园。在经过多次通话以及他的特使史蒂夫·维特科夫的多次斡旋之后，特朗普表示，他希望能与普京当面会谈，以打破僵局。

“President Putin invited me to get involved,” Mr. Trump said earlier this week. “He wants to get involved. I think, I believe he wants to get it over with. Now, I’ve said that a few times and I’ve been disappointed because I’d have like a great call with him and then missiles would be lobbed into Kyiv or some other place and you’d have 60 people laying on a road dying.”

“普京总统邀请我介入，”特朗普本周早些时候说。“他希望我介入。我认为，我相信他想结束这一切。其实，我已经说过好几次了，但一直很失望，因为我本以为和他进行了一次愉快的通话，结果随后导弹就会投向基辅或者其他地方，然后就有60人倒在路边死去。”

But Mr. Trump said he thought he could get through to his Russian counterpart. “I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, ‘You got to end this war; you got to end it.’”

但特朗普表示，他认为自己能说服俄罗斯总统。“我会去和弗拉基米尔·普京谈，我会告诉他，‘你必须结束这场战争，必须结束它。’”

Still, he and his aides have sought to play down expectations of an immediate breakthrough. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, called the meeting “a listening exercise for the president.” Speaking on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said any real decisions would be made at what he hoped would be a follow-up meeting bringing together Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky. “It’s setting the table for the second meeting,” he said of Alaska. But he added that there would be “very severe consequences” if Mr. Putin did not go along.

不过，特朗普及其幕僚都在试图淡化人们对会面能立即取得突破的期望。白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特称这次会面是“总统的一次倾听行动”。特朗普在周三表示，任何真正的决定都将在他所期望的后续会面中做出，届时普京和泽连斯基都将出席。“阿拉斯加的会面是为第二次会面做铺垫，”他说。但他还说，如果普京不配合，将会有“非常严重的后果”。

Michael C. Kimmage, a historian of U.S.-Russian relations at the Catholic University of America and author of “Collisions,” a book about the Ukraine war, said that Mr. Trump may believe that cultivating Mr. Putin serves a strategic purpose. When Mr. Trump returned to office in January, he said, he “thought he could scale back the war in Ukraine through his personal connection to Putin.”

美国天主教大学研究美俄关系的历史学家、关于乌战的《冲突》(Collisions)一书的作者迈克尔·基梅奇表示，特朗普可能认为，拉拢普京符合战略目的。他说，当特朗普在1月重返白宫时，他“认为自己可以通过与普京的私人关系来缓和乌克兰的战争”。

That did not work, but Mr. Trump may still persist in his personality-driven diplomacy with Mr. Putin because he “cannot resist the media spectacle and the opportunity to place himself at the center of it.” Moreover, after recent interventions to stop fighting between Thailand and Cambodia and settle decades of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, he added, it’s possible that Mr. Trump “thinks he’s on a roll.”

这个想法没有奏效，但特朗普可能仍会坚持用这种个人化外交方式与普京打交道，因为他“无法抗拒这种引人注目的媒体盛事，也无法放弃将自己置于核心位置的机会”。此外，基梅奇补充道，在最近斡旋停火泰国与柬埔寨的冲突、解决亚美尼亚和阿塞拜疆数十年的争端之后，特朗普可能“觉得自己正处于连胜势头”。

2013年，特朗普将环球小姐选美比赛带到莫斯科，并在社交媒体上问普京是否会成为他的 “新挚友”。

But in pursuing his Alaska summit with Mr. Putin without doing the usual diplomatic spadework of lower-level negotiations and consultations with allies beforehand to ensure success, Mr. Trump is attempting “a new style of diplomatic action,” Mr. Kimmage said. Mr. Trump, he said, appears focused primarily on settling the world’s big issues directly with leaders of the three major powers: himself, Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China.

但基梅奇称，特朗普在推进阿拉斯加与普京的峰会时，没有像往常那样先进行低级别的谈判以及与盟友磋商等外交准备工作以确保成功，他在尝试“一种新的外交行动风格”。他说，特朗普似乎主要专注于与三大强国的领导人——他自己、普京以及中国国家主席习近平——直接解决世界上的重大问题。

“This new style will turn much of the world into bystanders and simultaneously elevate a handful of leaders — with Trump first among equals — to a uniquely powerful status, a V.I.P. club of statesmen, consisting primarily of Xi, Putin and Trump,” Mr. Kimmage said. “This impulse will be put to the test on Friday.”

“这种新风格将使世界上的大多数国家沦为旁观者，同时将少数几位领导人——特朗普位居其中首席——提升到无可比拟的权势地位，形成一个主要由习近平、普京和特朗普组成的政治家VIP俱乐部，”基梅奇说。“这种冲动将在周五迎来考验。”