COMPREHENSION CHECK
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 464.
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
The Economist, November 2, 2002
- to strike against terrorists
- to expand the army
- to favour a military campaign
- to track down warlords
- the Internal Security Service {the FSB)
- desertion
- draft-dodging
- to collaborate
- large-scale military maneuvers
- clean-ups
- looting
- to extract oil
- non-profit/charity organizations
- vested interests
- to hold a referendum
- to adopt a new constitution
I. Answer the following questions to check how carefully you have read the texts:
- What can be done to combat Chechnya warlords?
2. Why do observers believe that, even renewed, a military campaign is doomed to failure?
- How do Russian troops conduct the Chechen military campaign?
- Why is Russia's total withdrawal from Chechnya implausible?
- What is the foul side of the campaign?
- How do Chechens earn money?
- What has been done to advance peace?
II. Now decide whether the statement is true or false; correct those that are wrong:
1. The Chechens first need to hold the election in order to hold a referendum adopting a new constitution.
2. Mr Maskhadov reunited the rebel factions and gave government posts to radical commanders who had previously broken with him.
3. The trade began after the end of the second Chechen war, when the foreign investors divided up the region's oil wells among themselves.
4. Chechnya is too ruined and anarchic simply to be left to fester on Russia's doorstep.
5. The trade is impossible to quantify, but Mr Basaev, now the most powerful Chechen warlord, once boasted that he got 90% of his arms from international organizations.
6. As for the Russian troops, according to a recent report by European bank for reconstruction and development, their treatment of prisoners includes rape of men, women and children, electric shocks and cutting off ears and fingers.
7. Many observers think that since the hostage affair, Mr Putin will favour some sort of negotiations and will not renew military campaign.