双语新闻：欧洲"现实主义者"让普京受益

2014-09-04 15:29:44来源：可可英语

　　Here we go again. Russian artillery fires and a convoy– filled with aid, the Russians say – rolls acrossUkraine’s border, where an awful but undeclaredbattle between Moscow’s proxies and the Kievgovernment for control of the country’s east hasbeen under way for months. Kiev calls this “a directinvasion”. What will Washington and its Europeanallies do?

　　又是老一套。俄罗斯炮兵开火，而(俄罗斯人说，满载援助的)护卫队开过乌克兰边境——在那里，虽然没有正式宣战，但莫斯科的代理人和乌克兰政府已经为争夺乌克兰东部控制权而爆发了一场持续数月的可怕战争。乌克兰政府将此称为“直接的侵略”。华盛顿及其欧洲盟友将如何应对?

　　Recent history suggests there will be many who argue against doing much. Why? BecausePresident Vladimir Putin , Russia’s tough-guy leader, has been playing the west like a fiddle,giving just enough to pretend he is something other than the ultranationalist autocrat he hasalways been.

　　最近的历史表明，将会有许多人反对采取严厉措施。原因何在?因为俄罗斯的硬汉领导人、总统弗拉基米尔•普京(Vladimir Putin)一直在欺骗西方，恰到好处地假装他不是极端民族主义独裁者，虽然他自始至终都是这么一个人。

　　Mr Putin, the former KGB spy, is a master at giving his western apologists room to manoeuvre;at putting a case out there, no matter how implausible. This was true from the very start ofhis rule, when I was a correspondent in Moscow for The Washington Post and he waslaunching his crackdown on independent media and on tycoons such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky.His western apologists were happy to take Mr Putin at his word, that he was merely cleaning upthe mess left by Boris Yeltsin, his predecessor, while failing to account for his efforts todismantle the admittedly flawed democracy he inherited. “If by democracy, you mean thedissolution of the state, we don’t need it,” he once told western correspondents. Few paidattention at first.

　　前克格勃(KGB)间谍普京非常擅长给他的西方辩护者发挥的空间，而且非常擅长编理由，无论它多么不合情理。他上台伊始就是这样，当时我担任《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)驻莫斯科记者，而他正开始打压独立媒体和米哈伊尔•霍多尔科夫斯基(Mikhail Khodorkovsky)等寡头。他的西方辩护者乐于相信他的话，即他只是在清理前任鲍里斯•叶利钦(Boris Yeltsin)留下的乱摊子，尽管他未能解释他为何努力摧毁自己继承的民主体制——诚然，它是有些缺陷。普京曾经对西方记者表示：“如果你所说的民主是让国家解体的意思，那我们不需要这种民主。”最初没什么人注意这一点。

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