The thunder of artillery echoes night and day over the mighty Dnipro River as it winds its way through southern Ukraine. With Russian and Ukrainian forces squared off on opposite banks, fighters have replaced fishermen, surveillance drones circle overhead and mines line the marshy embankments.
浩瀚的第聂伯河蜿蜒穿过乌克兰南部，河流上空日夜回荡着炮火声。俄罗斯和乌克兰军队隔河而战，渔民被战斗人员取代，侦察无人机在头顶盘旋，地雷遍布泥泞的堤岸。
Carving an arc through Ukraine from its northern border to the Black Sea, through Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the Dnipro shapes the country’s geography and economy, its culture and its very identity. And now it helps define the contours of battle — as it has for millenniums, a barrier and a conduit to warring Scythians, Greeks, Vikings, Huns, Cossacks, Russians, Germans and many more.
第聂伯河起于乌克兰北部边界，向南穿过基辅、扎波里日亚和赫尔松流入黑海，形成了一条塑造这个国家的地理和经济、文化和身份的弧线。现在，它构成了战斗的轮廓——几千年来皆是如此，它一直是斯基泰人、希腊人、维京人、匈奴人、哥萨克人、俄罗斯人、德国人的屏障和通道。
Visiting towns and villages along the Dnipro a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, Nicole Tung, a photographer for The New York Times, traveled a path marked by hope and horror, joy and sorrow.
在俄罗斯全面入侵一年后、备受期待的乌克兰反攻之前，纽约时报摄影师妮可·董(Nicole Tung)走访了第聂伯河沿岸的城镇和村庄，这是一段充满希望和恐惧、欢乐和悲伤的旅程。
The Dnipro has always been Ukraine’s great natural engine, supplying water, transport, power — and food. The fishing industry is crucial to Ukraine’s domestic food market, with 80 percent of the annual catch coming from the Dnipro and its reservoirs, according to the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group.
第聂伯河一直是乌克兰伟大的天然引擎，提供水、交通、电力——还有食物。据乌克兰自然保护组织称，渔业对乌克兰的国内食物市场至关重要，一年的捕捞量有80%来自第聂伯河及其水库。
But fish stocks have been decimated by the war. After Russian forces damaged the Nova Kakhovka dam, the river dropped by about 1.5 meters (five feet) over the winter, Ihor Syrota, the head of the state company that manages Ukraine’s hydropower plants, said in an interview. The water level hit a 30-year low — too low to sustain the fish population.
但由于战争，鱼类资源大量减少。管理乌克兰水电站的国有公司负责人伊霍·西罗塔在接受采访时说，在俄罗斯军队破坏新卡霍夫卡大坝后，一个冬天下来，水面下降了约1.5米。水位达到30年来的最低点——已经低到鱼群数量难以维持的地步。
Mykola Derebas, 54, a fisherman for over three decades, lost his job at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. He cannot even catch enough fish now to feed his own family in the town of Malokaterynivka, near the city of Zaporizhzhia.
54岁的米科拉·德雷巴斯做了30多年渔民，俄罗斯全面入侵一开始，他就失去了工作。他家在扎波里日亚市附近的马洛卡特里尼夫卡镇，他现在捕到的鱼甚至不够养活他的家人。
“Not being able to go fishing is almost like when a person loses their leg,” Mr. Derebas said in late January. “All I hoped for when the war started was for it to be over, but I don’t see how it will be finished anytime soon. All we can do is sit and wait.”
“不能捕鱼简直就像失去了一条腿，”德雷巴斯在1月下旬说。“我在战争开始的时候只希望战争结束，但我看不出这能很快结束。我们只能干等着。”
The dams along the Dnipro were once mighty symbols of Soviet prowess. “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country,” Vladimir Lenin famously declared in 1920.
第聂伯河沿岸的水坝曾经是苏联强大国力的象征。“共产主义就是苏维埃政权加全国电气化”是列宁在1920年的著名宣言。
In 1932, Soviet engineers completed work on what was then the largest dam ever built in Europe, near the city of Zaporizhzhia — one in a cascade of dams and hydroelectric plants on hundreds of miles of the Dnipro, from north of Kyiv to Nova Kakhovka. In the 1980s, their successors built the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest atomic power station, which now poses a particular risk as it lies in the line of fire.
1932年，苏联工程师在扎波里日亚市附近完成了当时欧洲有史以来最大的水坝工程——是第聂伯河从基辅北部到新卡霍夫卡数百英里的一系列水坝和水电站之一。在1980年代，他们的继任者建造了扎波里日亚核电站，这是欧洲最大的原子能发电站，现在处于火力打击范围内，因此构成了特殊的风险。
Over the past year, Moscow has repeatedly bombed the Dnipro power stations that Soviet leaders so proudly promoted as the key to prosperity.
在过去的一年里，莫斯科多次轰炸了第聂伯发电站，而苏联领导人曾无比自豪地宣传其为繁荣的关键。
While Ukraine is working to restore water levels on the Dnipro, they remain far below normal.
虽然乌克兰正在努力恢复第聂伯河的水位，但仍远低于正常水平。
“Of special concern are large reservoirs along the Dnipro River, which are critical for energy production, cooling of nuclear power plants, sustaining agriculture and seasonal flow regulation,” said a study published in the scientific journal Nature in March.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is under Russian occupation, and British military intelligence recently warned that Russian forces had “established sandbag fighting positions on the roofs of several of the six reactor buildings,” which “increases the chances of damage” to the plant.
扎波里日亚核电站处于俄罗斯占领之下，英国军事情报部门最近警告说，俄罗斯军队“在六座反应堆建筑物中的几座屋顶上设立了沙袋阵地”，核电站受损的“可能性增加”。
While the situation there has sparked international alarm, other dangers have gotten less attention.
虽然这一局势已引起国际恐慌，却很少有人关注到其他方面的危险。
One of the Soviet Union’s largest processing plants for nuclear fuel sits near the river, outside the city of Dnipro — long neglected, though it holds an estimated 40 million tons of radioactive waste, according to a 2020 report by the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group. Scientists have warned of an environmental catastrophe if the facility is shelled and waste contaminates the river.
挪威环境组织贝罗纳基金会在2020年发布的一份报告显示，苏联最大的核燃料加工厂之一位于第聂伯城外，就在河边——据估计它拥有4000万吨放射性废物，但长期被忽视。科学家们警告说，如果该设施遭到炮击并且废物污染河流，将造成环境灾难。
The conflict has already wrought untold damage.
冲突已经造成难以估量的破坏。
The study in Nature showed how in the first months of the war alone, Russian attacks on wastewater treatment facilities resulted in widespread pollution of waters. At the same time, the rivers and irrigation channels that both militaries use as natural fortifications “have also become a burial place for military objects,” like ammunition that can leak heavy metals and toxic explosives, with impacts that may last for decades.
《自然》杂志的研究表明，仅在战争的前几个月，俄罗斯对废水处理设施的袭击就导致了广泛的水域污染。与此同时，两军将河流和灌溉渠道作为天然防御工事，“也被用来掩埋军用物品”，例如可能泄漏重金属的弹药和有毒的炸药，其影响可能持续数十年。
President Volodymyr Zelensky often quotes Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s most famous poet, to rally his nation. In his 1845 poem “Testament,” a battle cry against Russian subjugation, Shevchenko wrote that he would not go to God until the Dnipro “delivers to the sea the spilled blood of Ukraine’s enemies.”
泽连斯基总统经常引用乌克兰最著名的诗人塔拉斯·舍甫琴科的话来团结他的国家。舍甫琴科1845年的作品《遗嘱》是反对俄罗斯征服的战斗口号，他写道，在见上帝前，第聂伯河要将“乌克兰的敌人溅出的鲜血带入大海”。
Many Ukrainians would support that sentiment, but even during some of the war’s darkest moments, Ukrainians have also found ways to celebrate life. That is particularly true in cities like Dnipro that have not been at the heart of the fighting, though they have suffered bombings and blackouts, and have given refuge to people fleeing horrors elsewhere.
许多乌克兰人会支持这种情感，但即使在战争的一些最黑暗时刻，乌克兰人也想办法歌颂生活。在像第聂伯市这样并未处于战斗中心的城市尤其如此，虽然这里也遭受了轰炸和停电；它还为逃离其他地方的恐怖袭击的人们提供了避难所。
This winter, young actors and dancers from the Dnipro Academic Opera and Ballet Theater performed “Sorochinsky Fair,” an operetta based on a story by the Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol. It is a love story centered on overcoming evil spirits, mixing Ukrainian folk traditions, crafts and humor.
今年冬天，来自第聂伯歌剧芭蕾舞剧院的年轻演员和舞蹈家表演了《索罗钦的集市》，一部根据乌克兰作家尼古拉·果戈理的故事改编的轻歌剧。这是一个以战胜恶灵为主题的爱情故事，融合了乌克兰民间传说、工艺和幽默。
The war rages on along the river, scarring towns and villages, and Russia has often directed its fire at civilian areas, a reminder that when armies clash, civilians often pay the highest price.
战争沿着河流肆虐，城镇和村庄伤痕累累，俄罗斯经常将火力对准平民区，这提醒人们，当军队发生冲突时，付出最高代价的往往是平民。
As the Germans invaded in 1941, Stalin ordered the destruction of the great Soviet dam in Zaporizhzhia, flooding a vast area and killing anywhere between 20,000 and 100,000 people, according to military historians. In 1943, the Germans blew up the dam again, trying to slow the Soviet advance in the Battle of the Dnipro, one of the largest engagements of the war.
据军事历史学家，随着1941年德军入侵，斯大林下令摧毁苏联在扎波里日亚的大坝，导致大片地区被洪水淹没，造成2–10万人死亡。1943年，德国人再次炸毁大坝，试图拖慢苏联在第聂伯河战役中的推进，这是战争中规模最大的战役之一。
Last fall, Ukrainian forces drove the invaders from the west bank of the lower Dnipro, including the city of Kherson and the farms and hamlets around it, but the Russians have continued to bombard the area. For Inna, 57, and her husband Mykola, 63, who live near the city of Kherson, that means days are centered around getting the cooking and cleaning done before noon, when the sound of incoming Russian artillery means it is time to move to their food cellar.
去年秋天，乌克兰军队将入侵者赶出第聂伯河下游西岸，包括赫尔松市及其周围的农场和小村庄，但俄罗斯人继续轰炸该地区。对于居住在赫尔松市附近的57岁的英娜和她63岁的丈夫米科拉来说，这意味着每天都要抓紧时间在中午之前完成做饭和打扫卫生，因为俄罗斯炮火会在那时响起，到时候就只能转移到他们用来储藏食物的地窖了。
“I don’t want to leave this home because I can’t, mentally,” Inna said this winter. “These are my walls, and if it’s meant to be, it will be.”
“我不想离开这个家，因为我精神上离不开它，”英娜在今年冬天说。“这些是我的墙，如果注定如此，那么就这样吧。”
The Ukrainian authorities have ordered all residents on the river’s west bank not to leave their homes this weekend, as Russian shelling of the region has intensified ahead of the looming Ukrainian counteroffensive. On a single day this week, Russian shelling killed at least 23 civilians.
由于俄罗斯在乌克兰反攻迫在眉睫之前加强了对该地区的炮击，乌克兰当局已下令西岸所有居民本周末不要出门。本周的一天，俄罗斯炮击造成至少23名平民死亡。
Rivers can “tell the story of a nation’s history and a people’s experience,” Roman Cybriwsky observed in his authoritative chronicle of the Dnipro, “Along Ukraine’s River.”
河流可以“讲述一个国家的历史和人民的经历”，罗曼·赛布里夫斯基在他的第聂伯河权威编年史《沿着乌克兰的河流》中说。
The Dnipro tells a tale with “a plentitude of national sorrow,” he wrote, but also reveals moments “uplifting and joyous,” an observation that holds true even in wartime. In areas out of range of Russian artillery, the Dnipro remains a vital part of Ukrainian life. People flock to its banks to find moments of solace and reprieve.
他写道，第聂伯河讲述了一个“充满民族悲痛”的故事，但也揭示了“令人振奋和欢乐”的时刻，这一观察即使在战时也适用。在俄罗斯大炮射程之外的地区，第聂伯河仍然是乌克兰人生活的重要组成部分。人们涌向河岸寻找安慰和纾解的时刻。
But everywhere, the savage toll of wars past and present is visible. The burial mounds of Scythian fighters killed thousands of years ago can be found near memorials to soldiers and civilians killed in World War II. At a graveyard outside the city of Dnipro, there is a section for soldiers killed in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea.
但是，过去和现在的战争造成了惨重伤亡，满目疮痍。在第二次世界大战中阵亡的士兵和平民的纪念碑附近，可以找到几千年前被杀的斯基泰战士的墓葬。在第聂伯城外的一个墓地里，有一个区域属于2014年俄罗斯入侵克里米亚时在乌克兰东部阵亡的士兵。
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, the cemetery continues to grow.
自去年俄罗斯全面入侵以来，墓地不断扩大。
