ANTON TROIANOVSKI2026年8月13日俄罗斯国家媒体上月拍摄的一张照片，显示普京总统在克里姆林宫的办公室。由于普京的行踪一直保密，记者们只能通过观察他办公室里植物的枯萎情况来推测他的活动。 Gavriil Grigorov/SputnikPresident Trump’s Air Force One subterfuge was a stunning episode of official deception.特朗普总统关于“空军一号”的掩人耳目之举是一起惊人的官方欺骗事件。But it pales in comparison to the secrecy surrounding President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose activity is shrouded in so much mystery that journalists have tried to track it by assessing the wilting of his office plants.但与围绕俄罗斯总统普京的保密程度相比，这简直是小巫见大巫。普京的活动被重重谜团所笼罩，以至于记者们试图通过观察他办公室植物的枯萎程度来追踪他的行踪。That is the method some reporters resorted to this year as they worked to ascertain whether the Russian leader’s televised meetings took place when the Kremlin said they did. The apparent reversal of the leaf decay seen in Mr. Putin’s plants suggested that the meetings actually took place in a different order and on different days. 今年，为了核实这位俄罗斯领导人的电视直播会议是否真的是在克里姆林宫声明的时间举行，一些记者就是这么做的。普京办公室植物叶片枯萎现象的明显逆转表明，这些会议实际上并非按克里姆林宫所说的顺序和日期举行。For Mr. Putin, such deceit is par for the course. The White House, by contrast, has been criticized for not revealing Mr. Trump’s secret plane switch on a Turkish tarmac last month until The Washington Post broke the story this week.对普京来说，这种欺骗是家常便饭。相比之下，白宫却因未披露特朗普上个月在土耳其停机坪秘密更换飞机一事受到批评，《华盛顿邮报》本周率先报道了此事。“Compared to Russia,” said Mikhail Rubin, a Russian investigative reporter, “this is child’s play.”“与俄罗斯相比，”俄罗斯调查记者米哈伊尔·鲁宾说，“这简直是小儿科。”Mr. Rubin and other reporters have found that Mr. Putin has outfitted his residences with nearly identical offices so that video footage of meetings does not reveal his location. His security apparatus has developed a presidential train, along with special railroad spurs and secret stations near at least three of his country residences, according to news reports and satellite images.鲁宾和其他记者发现，普京在住所里配备了几乎一模一样的办公室，这样会议的视频画面就不会暴露他的位置。据新闻报道和卫星图像显示，他的安保机构开发了一列总统专列，并在他至少三个乡村宅邸附近修建了专用铁路支线和秘密车站。Government officials are forced to play along, keeping their meetings with Mr. Putin a secret until they are televised — sometimes weeks later — and then pretending they happened on that day.政府官员被迫配合，将他们与普京的会面保密，直到会议在电视上播出（有时要等到几周后），然后假装会议就是在当天举行的。In Russia, official falsehoods about the president’s whereabouts “are just a regular Tuesday,” said Farida Rustamova, a Russian journalist who covers the Kremlin from exile. She has reported that Mr. Putin’s interlocutors in his televised meetings sometimes speak of outdated events, in at least one case in clothes and a haircut incongruous with other public appearances.流亡海外、主要报道克里姆林宫动态的俄罗斯记者法丽达·鲁斯塔莫娃说，在俄罗斯，关于总统行踪的官方谎言“不过是家常便饭”。她曾报道称，在普京的电视会议中，与会者有时会谈论过时的事件，至少在一例中，其衣着和发型与其他公开露面时不符。There is even a term of art for those delayed-release Putin meetings among Russian journalists: konservy, or canned goods.俄罗斯记者们甚至为这些延迟播出的普京会议造了一个专门的行话：konservy，即罐头装的物品。The Kremlin has previously denied deceiving the public about Mr. Putin’s location and did not respond to a request for comment.克里姆林宫此前曾否认就普京的行踪欺骗公众，且未回应置评请求。Covering Mr. Putin as a New York Times correspondent based in Moscow, I got a sense of the lengths the Russian president goes to in order to hide his movements when I visited Lake Valdai, where he has a country residence, in 2021. Residents told me about a mysterious new railroad line that had been built toward his compound. Satellite imagery showed a new station, with a helipad, that did not appear on timetables or railway maps.作为《纽约时报》驻莫斯科记者报道普京期间，我在2021年访问普京的乡间别墅所在地瓦尔代湖时，切身感受到这位俄罗斯总统为隐藏行踪所费的心机。当地居民告诉我，有一条神秘的新铁路线修建到了他的别墅区。卫星图像显示，当地新建了一座配有直升机停机坪的车站，但它没有出现在列车时刻表上，也没有被标注在铁路地图上。In 2023, a defector from the Russian version of the Secret Service, the F.S.O., asserted that Mr. Putin was using train travel to avoid being tracked. Leaked documents indicated that a secret armored train outfitted for the office of the president, painted like a regular passenger train but complete with a gym, spa and special communications equipment, was used by Mr. Putin himself.2023年，一名来自俄罗斯联邦警卫局（FSO，相当于特勤局）的叛逃者声称，普京利用火车出行以避免被追踪。泄露的文件显示，一列专为总统办公室配备的秘密装甲列车由普京本人使用，其外观被涂装成普通客运列车的样子，内部配备了健身房、水疗中心和特殊通信设备。Mr. Putin’s preoccupation with secrecy and security appeared to increase during the pandemic, when he forced officials to quarantine for two weeks to see him and when his isolation made it easier to hide his whereabouts. And it has reached new heights since his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, especially as that country’s drones flew deeper into Russia, helping precipitate mobile internet shutdowns and reportedly curtailing his travel.普京对保密和安全的重视在疫情期间似乎有所加剧，当时他要求官员们隔离两周才能见他，而这种隔离状态也让他更容易隐藏行踪。自2022年他入侵乌克兰以来，这种重视达到了新的高度，尤其是随着乌克兰的无人机飞入俄罗斯更深处，这不仅导致移动互联网服务被中断，据报道还限制了他的出行。In Moscow, there is now speculation that the enormous motorcades racing down city streets that are presumed to be carrying Mr. Putin are actually sometimes decoys, according to Ms. Rustamova. One of my Kremlin-connected contacts in Moscow told me the same.鲁斯塔莫娃表示，莫斯科目前有传言称，那些在城市街道上疾驰、据推测载有普京先生的庞大车队实际上有时只是诱饵。我在莫斯科的一位与克里姆林宫有联系的知情人也对我说了同样的话。Mr. Rubin, the investigative journalist, first reported in 2020 that Mr. Putin worked from identical-looking offices in his residences in the Moscow suburbs and in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, allowing the Kremlin to lie about his location. A report last year by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty uncovered more details about that deception effort, highlighting tiny differences between those otherwise identical offices — like the placement of door handles and wall seams — that indicated they were in different places.调查记者鲁宾在2020年首次报道称，普京在莫斯科郊区和黑海度假胜地索契的宅邸设有外观完全相同的办公室，这使得克里姆林宫得以对其行踪进行隐瞒。自由欧洲电台/自由电台去年的一份报道揭露了关于这种欺骗手段的更多细节，重点指出了那些看似完全相同的办公室之间微小的差异——比如门把手和墙缝的位置，这些细节表明它们实际上位于不同的地点。Mr. Rubin, who is now based in North Carolina and is deputy editor of the news outlet Proekt, first got a sense of Mr. Putin’s secrecy when he covered the Kremlin for a Russian business newspaper a decade ago. Mr. Rubin once happened to see members of Mr. Putin’s Security Council arriving for a meeting, but his office only announced the gathering days later, as though it was a new occurrence. He came to realize, he said, “that Putin’s public image is made up, it’s an absolute lie from beginning to end.”鲁宾现在常驻北卡罗来纳州，担任新闻机构“Proekt”的副主编。十年前，当他代表一家俄罗斯商业报纸报道克里姆林宫时，首次感受到了普京的神秘。鲁宾曾经偶然看到普京的安全委员会成员前来开会，但普京的办公室直到几天后才宣布这次会议，就好像这是一件新发生的事情。他说，他逐渐意识到，“普京的公众形象是伪造的，从头到尾都是彻头彻尾的谎言。”For Mr. Putin, the deception is not only about security, but about projecting an air of constant activity and control. The intensity of U.S. press coverage of the president, on the other hand, would have been unimaginable in Russia even before the Ukraine war and the pandemic.对于普京来说，这种欺骗不仅仅是为了安全，也是为了展现出一种时刻在忙碌和掌控一切的姿态。相比之下，即使在乌克兰战争和疫情爆发之前，美国媒体对总统的密集报道在俄罗斯也是难以想象的。But the Trump administration’s restrictions on the news media and its misdirection surrounding the president’s flight last month still look familiar in some Russian eyes.但在一些俄罗斯人看来，特朗普政府对新闻媒体的限制以及上个月围绕总统专机事件的误导依然令人感到似曾相识。“Putin in this sense is a caricature of a figure who has taken everything happening around him to the point of absurdity,” Mr. Rubin said. “Trump, it seems to me, is only starting to move in this direction.”“从这个意义上说，普京是一个将周围发生的一切推向荒谬境地的漫画式人物，”鲁宾说。“而在我看来，特朗普才刚刚开始朝着这个方向发展。”Anton Troianovski自华盛顿为《纽约时报》报道有关美国外交政策和国家安全的文章。他此前曾在莫斯科和柏林任驻外记者。翻译：晋其角点击查看本文英文版。