时间:2019-01-14 作者:英语课 分类:VOA标准英语2015年(三月)


英语课

In Ukraine's Nikishino, No House Untouched by Fighting


NIKISHINO, UKRAINE—


In the village of Nikishino, in eastern Ukraine, recent fighting has brought utter devastation 1. Ninety percent of the houses have been damaged or destroyed after government forces tried and failed to stop rebels advancing on the strategically important nearby town of Debaltseve.


The Ukrainian media called this place the gates of hell. Once a normal village five kilometers south of Debaltseve, Nikishino is now a moonscape saturated 2 with the refuse of war.


No house is untouched, and most are gutted 3. Only the dogs remain.


For weeks, government forces crouched 4 in these holes as separatists tightened 5 the pocket around Debaltseve, a crucial rail hub that would give them control of the main highway from Donetsk through Luhansk to the Russian border. In the final days, the two sides faced each other from either end of the village, fighting in people’s bedrooms, kitchens and outbuildings.


For Irina Ribinskaya, who walks alone among the ruins, a mangled 6 house is all that remains 7 of her old life in this place that was once home to some 1,000 residents.


“Three of us were living here, me, my husband and my mother-in-law," she said, surveying the damage. "This is the house, or what’s left of it. There’s the summer kitchen; there was the shed where we kept our cow. There was the garage. They took everything, this is all we have now.”


She and her husband, Viktor, have returned to feed their dogs. They couple had just retired 8 after long years working in the mines and on the railway. They spent weeks in the basement before finally escaping the shelling. Elena said their house was the most beautiful on the street, which is now barely discernable from the surrounding landscape.


"It's just war, if there wasn't a war, none of this would have happened," she said. "We weren't here when the house was actually destroyed. We were happy just to get out when we did. Who knows who did this.”


The town's World War II memorial is the only remaining witness to the fighting, its face torn by shrapnel.


In the surrounding fields, millions of summer’s unharvested sunflowers stand dead, the meadows sown with rockets and mines.


On January 30 the government pulled out, and the separatists announced they had control of Nikishino. By then, there was nothing here left to hold.



n.毁坏;荒废;极度震惊或悲伤
  • The bomb caused widespread devastation. 炸弹造成大面积破坏。
  • There was devastation on every side. 到处都是破坏的创伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》
a.饱和的,充满的
  • The continuous rain had saturated the soil. 连绵不断的雨把土地淋了个透。
  • a saturated solution of sodium chloride 氯化钠饱和溶液
adj.容易消化的v.毁坏(建筑物等)的内部( gut的过去式和过去分词 );取出…的内脏
  • Disappointed? I was gutted! 失望?我是伤心透了!
  • The invaders gutted the historic building. 侵略者们将那幢历史上有名的建筑洗劫一空。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
v.屈膝,蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 )
  • He crouched down beside her. 他在她的旁边蹲了下来。
  • The lion crouched ready to pounce. 狮子蹲下身,准备猛扑。
收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 ); (使)变紧; (使)绷紧; 加紧
  • The rope holding the boat suddenly tightened and broke. 系船的绳子突然绷断了。
  • His index finger tightened on the trigger but then relaxed again. 他的食指扣住扳机,然后又松开了。
vt.乱砍(mangle的过去式与过去分词形式)
  • His hand was mangled in the machine. 他的手卷到机器里轧烂了。
  • He was off work because he'd mangled his hand in a machine. 他没上班,因为他的手给机器严重压伤了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹
  • He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
  • The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。
adj.隐退的,退休的,退役的
  • The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
  • Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。
学英语单词
aboral stomach
Aeterni Patris
AKAs
American Indian Day
automatic identification method
biflorone
black mark-line
bullroarer
category of manifold
cedros i.
ceillometer
change for the better
chew someone's ears off
China Insurance Institute
chronometric analysis
columella fornicis
comotherhood
compound modifier
concrete lead-lined cell
cooling manifold
deoxysaccharide
dimethyl fumarate
dimorphous form
disulfide bridge
drum for plane iron
e-plane cutoff filter
earth-to-orbit
elkosine
enclosed self-ventilated type motor
exciter nerve
first-aid room
fixation line
flat-bar steel
flexible metallic conduit
footlocker
forest floor
frequency shift automatic block
glandule
grains kefir
high moisture grains
high power connector
hoss opera
hydrocarboxylation
imagology
in the centre of
inorganic materials
intracranial infection
intracranial pressure sensor
Jiaoxi Township
just
keyed data set
Limni
longitudinal key
Lovoa
make one's appearance
maldivess
mass-transfer reaction
megatrials
metagenic deposit
mover for material
mqw waveguide
neonazi
nonanchored recognition
nonassigned
off-bearing
olenecamptus taiwanus
orbit centre
Osler's sign
pallet feed
pandrass
parasteatoda ferrumequina
pay off old reckoning
phono-radio
pipe truss
position by mixed observations
propagation of disease
property agents
proppose
Quad data rate
radial outflow turbine
rami malleolar mediales
reset lever
schooldays
single-acting turbocharged two-stroke engine
slave state
smokecolored
stock-pickers
structural detailing criteria
Sudaneseness
sulcus interdemius
tabular calculation
teaser coil
tectonic syntaxis
teleeducation
the revival of learning
tueting
turbulent heat transfer
undulating-ribbon structure
vectodyne
waxing paper
workstation number
zero-power space