American restrictions on hitting Russia are hurting Ukraine
The Biden administration’s justifications keep changing
拜登政府的说法总是变来变去。
2024年9月05日 09:06 上午
UKRAINE’S FRUSTRATION is growing by the day over restrictions that the Biden administration has imposed on the use of American-supplied weapons against targets inside Russia.
乌克兰对拜登政府限制他们用美国武器打击俄罗斯的做法越来越不满。
As Russia launched massive missile and drone attacks on cities and energy infrastructure over two days last week (August 26th and 27th), Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, led a delegation to Washington as part of a fresh bid to get the policy changed. According to reports, the Ukrainian team was seeking permission to go after a specific number of high-value targets with American missiles.
上周的8月26日和27日，俄罗斯对乌克兰的城市和能源设施进行了大规模导弹和无人机袭击。就在这时，乌克兰国防部长鲁斯泰姆·乌梅罗夫和泽连斯基总统的首席幕僚安德烈·耶尔马克带着代表团去了华盛顿，希望能改变政策。据说，他们想要得到许可，用美国导弹打击一些重要目标。
Their mission is a direct response to the shifting excuses coming from the Pentagon and from national security officials about why the restrictions should hold while other supposed red lines have become blurred to the point of invisibility.
他们的任务就是直接回应五角大楼和国家安全官员那些不断变化的借口，解释为什么这些限制还要继续，而其他一些所谓的红线却模糊得几乎看不见了。
A blanket ban on hitting targets in Russia, for instance, was lifted in May, when Ukraine was told it could strike Russian troop concentrations on the other side of the border preparing to attack the city of Kharkiv. When, a month ago, the Ukrainians crossed into Kursk, they took with them HIMARS missile batteries that were deployed against Russian forces called in to repel the invasion. No objections were raised in Washington.
比如说，五月的时候，针对俄罗斯的全面禁令被取消了，那时乌克兰可以攻击准备进攻哈尔科夫的俄罗斯部队。一个月前，乌克兰越过库尔斯克时，还带上了“海马斯”导弹发射系统，用来对付那些派来反击入侵的俄罗斯军队。华盛顿对此完全没有异议。
The reason given in the past for forbidding Ukraine from using American weapons against targets in Russia was that this could trigger an escalatory response from the Kremlin that would end up doing more harm to Ukraine and might even result in Russia resorting to nuclear weapons. However, that justification has become increasingly strained.
之前不让乌克兰用美国武器打俄罗斯目标的理由是，这可能会惹怒克里姆林宫，导致更大的冲突，对乌克兰造成更多伤害，甚至可能让俄罗斯动用核武器。不过，现在这个理由听起来越来越站不住脚了。
Vladimir Putin’s nuclear sabre-rattling has been exposed as just that, while Russia has hardly held back in other ways. As Sir Lawrence Freedman, a military historian, says, the missile and drone attacks last week are part of a systematic campaign to make life as miserable as possible for ordinary Ukrainians this winter. “Russia,” he says, “wants hundreds of thousands to leave their homes, perhaps creating yet another refugee crisis in neighbouring European countries”.
普京的核威胁被揭穿了，实际上没什么实质性的动作，而俄罗斯在其他方面却毫不留情。正如军事历史学家劳伦斯·弗里曼爵士所说，上周的导弹和无人机袭击是俄罗斯故意让普通乌克兰人在这个冬天过得尽可能艰难的一部分。“俄罗斯，”他说，“希望成千上万的人离开自己的家，这样可能会在邻国引发新的难民危机。”
In recent months, various new reasons for constraining Ukraine have been trotted out. Unnamed officials have suggested that the administration does not want to jeopardise a “reset” of relations with Moscow at some point in the future. Other officials argue that allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS, a longer-range system than HIMARS, against targets in Russia would not change the strategic picture because there are not enough targets in range. Russia has moved most of the aircraft used to launch powerful glide bombs to airfields beyond the 300km range of the ATACMS missile, and that it is anyway a scarce resource which is better employed against targets in Crimea.
最近几个月，限制乌克兰的各种新理由不断冒出来。一些匿名官员说，政府不想在未来搞砸和莫斯科的关系“重启”。还有人认为，让乌克兰用比“海马斯”射程更远的ATACMS系统打击俄罗斯目标也没啥意义，因为那边根本没有足够多的目标在射程内。俄罗斯已经把发射高精度滑翔炸弹的飞机移到了超过ATACMS导弹300公里范围之外，而且这些资源本来就很稀缺，更适合用来对付克里米亚的目标。
It has also recently emerged that the administration has stopped Britain and France from allowing Ukraine to use the Storm Shadow/SCALP weapons they have provided outside Ukrainian territory. It has been able to do this because the cruise missile contains some American components.
最近有消息说，美国政府阻止了英国和法国让乌克兰在境外使用它们提供的“风暴之影”/“斯卡尔普”武器。之所以能这么做，是因为这些导弹里有一些美国的零件。
Ben Hodges, a former commander of American forces in Europe, describes this as “constant excuse-making, which is both misleading and inaccurate”. It is not clear, for example, why inadequate numbers of ATACMS should be a restraint. A detailed report by Defence Express, a Ukrainian consulting firm, suggests that America probably holds stocks of at least 2,500 of the missiles, which first entered service more than 30 years ago.
前驻欧洲美军指挥官本·霍奇斯说这简直就是“不断找借口，既误导又不准确”。比如，为什么ATACMS数量不足会成为限制呢？乌克兰的一家咨询公司“国防快讯”有份详细报告提到，美国可能至少还有2500枚这种导弹，而它们早在30多年前就已经投入使用了。
The claim that there are not enough worthwhile targets is equally questionable. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think-tank, argues that “Ukrainian long-range strikes against Russian military targets within Russia’s rear are crucial for degrading Russian military capabilities throughout the theatre, and the lifting of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-provided weapons would allow Ukrainian forces to strike a wide range of significant targets undergirding Russia’s war effort.”
说没有足够有价值的目标，这个说法也挺可疑的。华盛顿的“战争研究所”认为，“乌克兰对俄罗斯后方进行远程打击非常关键，可以削弱俄罗斯在整个战区的军事能力。如果放宽对乌克兰使用西方武器的限制，乌克兰军队就能攻击很多支撑俄罗斯战争努力的重要目标。”
The institute assesses that some 250 military “objects” are within range of ATACMS, of which only 17 are airfields from which aircraft may have departed. Many of these are large military bases, communications stations, logistics centres, fuel depots and ammunition warehouses that would be hard to move without serious consequences for Russia’s war effort.
这个研究所认为，大约有250个军事“目标”在ATACMS的射程内，其中只有17个是飞机可能起飞的机场。很多都是大型军事基地、通信站、后勤中心、燃料库和弹药仓库，要是想搬走这些地方，俄罗斯的战争努力肯定会受到很大影响。
General Hodges, who remains a senior adviser to NATO on logistics, says there is “no moral or legal reason for not going after these targets”. He argues that Mr Biden gets much of his advice from Obama-era officials who repeatedly got Russia wrong. Unless Mr Biden changes his mind, “his legacy will be tainted”. Sir Lawrence concurs: The Americans are “caught in a trap of their own making and they don’t know how to get out of it”. But Mr Biden, he says, is “a stubborn old man”.
霍奇斯将军现在是北约的物流高级顾问，他说“没有道德或法律上的理由不去打击这些目标”。他觉得拜登很多建议都是来自奥巴马时代的官员，而这些人对俄罗斯一直判断错误。除非拜登改变主意，否则“他的遗产会受到影响”。劳伦斯爵士也同意这个看法：“美国人自己陷入了一个困境，却不知道怎么出去。”不过他说，“拜登就是个固执的老人。”
Mr Zelensky will soon have a last chance to convince Mr Biden to adopt a new approach before he leaves office, when the two will meet next week in New York, on the fringes of the annual UN General Assembly.
泽连斯基很快就会有最后一次机会来说服拜登在离任前换个做法，他们下周会在纽约见面，正好是在联合国大会的边会上。
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are showing that they are capable of producing alternatives to Western systems. Their increasingly sophisticated long-range drones are regularly hitting targets deep inside Russia. On August 28th oil depots were struck in Rostov and Kirov provinces–up to 1,200km from the Ukrainian border. On September 1st, as part of one of Ukraine’s largest drone attacks of the war, an oil refinery near Moscow was hit.
与此同时，乌克兰人正在证明他们能搞出替代西方系统的东西。他们越来越先进的长程无人机经常打击俄罗斯境内的目标。8月28日，他们袭击了罗斯托夫和基洛夫省的石油储存设施，距离乌克兰边境足有1200公里。9月1日，在一次大规模无人机攻击中，莫斯科附近的一座炼油厂也被炸了。
Ukraine has even more powerful weapons in development. Mr Zelensky recently announced the successful test of Ukraine’s first ballistic missile. Fabian Hinz, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think-tank, says that it is probably an evolution of the Hrim-2 missile. On and off, it has been developed for nearly a decade, with some funding from Saudi Arabia. He reckons that it is no surprise Ukraine has the technical skills and industrial know-how to produce capable missiles. The country was once at the heart of Soviet programmes for strategic and cruise missiles. Ukraine boasts excellent young engineers and has already shown what it can do with a home-grown anti-ship cruise missile, called Neptune, as well as its land-attack version.
乌克兰正在研发更强的武器。泽连斯基最近宣布他们成功试射了第一枚弹道导弹。伦敦的国际战略研究所(IISS)的导弹专家法比安·欣茨说，这可能是Hrim-2导弹的升级版。这玩意儿开发了快十年，还得到了沙特阿拉伯的一些资金支持。他觉得乌克兰能造出好导弹一点都不奇怪，因为这个国家曾经是苏联战略和巡航导弹项目的重要基地。而且，乌克兰有很多优秀年轻工程师，他们已经展示了在国产反舰巡航导弹“海王星”和陆基版本上的实力。
However, Ben Barry, a land-warfare specialist also at the IISS, warns that although Ukraine is already waging a “deep battle” against a variety of targets in Russia, it may struggle to scale up production of its long-range systems. Yet by showing what they can do, says Mr Barry, the Ukrainians make an even stronger case for being allowed to use ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP against such targets. For now, as the Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, put it following last week’s onslaught against cities in Ukraine: “Russian planes are better protected by Western guarantees than are Ukrainian civilians.”
不过，国际战略研究所(IISS)的陆战专家本·巴里(Ben Barry)提醒说，虽然乌克兰已经在对俄罗斯的多个目标进行“深层打击”，但他们可能会在扩大远程武器生产上遇到困难。不过，巴里表示，通过展示自己的能力，乌克兰更有理由要求使用“攻击巡航导弹”(ATACMS)和“风暴之影”(Storm Shadow/SCALP)来打击这些目标。就像立陶宛外长加布里埃莱斯·兰德贝吉斯(Gabrielius Landsbergis)上周在乌克兰城市遭袭后说的：“俄罗斯飞机得到的西方保护比乌克兰平民要好得多。”
