| | Words in the News |
INTRO | | On 26th March Vladimir Putin won the Russian presidential elections, gaining over half the votes cast. Before the elections, BBC correspondents Robert Parsons and Steve Rosenberg examined some of the underlying issues. |
IN FULL | |  | Listen to the report in full |
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23rd March 2000
Background to the Russian Elections
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NEWS 1 | | | Listen to the first part of the report |
| | | A year after NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, Russia still nurses its wounded pride. By ignoring Moscow's objections to military intervention, the West had underscored Russia's loss of power. The slight has never been forgiven. |
WORDS | | nurses: if you nurse an emotion or an ambition, you feel it strongly for a long time underscored: the western countries had drawn attention to the loss of power, emphasizing its importance slight: a slight is when you treat a country or person as if they are unimportant
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| NEWS 2 | | | Listen to the second part of the report |
| | | Mr Putin wants to make Russia powerful again, and that, he believes, means strengthening the army, a nestbed here of anti-Western sentiment. The co-operation of Russian troops with KFOR, the NATO-led multi-national peacekeeping force in Kosovo, has belied the growing tension, but it too is under threat. |
| WORDS | | nestbed: literally the bottom of a nest; here a place where anti-western feelings are strong and influential
sentiment: an attitude, feeling or opinion
belied: a formal word; if one thing belies another it makes the other seem very surprising |
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| NEWS 3 | | | Listen to the third part of the report |
| | | Out on the campaign trail Mr Putin, the man set to become Russia's next president, has been selling hard the idea of a strong centralised state where laws passed in Moscow are obeyed nationwide with no exceptions. The Russian federation is a vast patchwork of eighty-nine regions. Many are poor and rely heavily on subsidies from Moscow. They have little to lose from increased Kremlin control. But for those areas rich in natural resources and industry, the prospect of handing power back to Moscow is a bitter pill to swallow. |
| WORDS | | campaign trail: if a politician is on the campaign trail, it means they are attending meetings and talking on radio and TV trying to persuade people to vote for them
patchwork: made up of a variety of different elements
subsidies: here, when part of the costs of a service are paid by the government
Kremlin: the location of the government of Russia, here used to mean the government itself
prospect: the prospects for something are the chances of it being successful
bitter pill to swallow: something that is difficult to contemplate or deal with
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| | | Read about the background in BBC News Online |
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