BELARUSTV — broadcast
20260911 143000 UTC
283 transcript segments
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[00:01:54] We are going on a reconnaissance mission to the Belarusian hinterland to
[00:01:57] find out how former city dwellers live there.
[00:02:03] They and her husband had no plans at all to move to the village to grow
[00:02:06] grapes, then suddenly my father dies
[00:02:09] unexpectedly, it turns out next to
[00:02:12] his house there is a huge vineyard, and it remains. Very soon the Belarusian
[00:02:16] spring showed them its character, about 40%
[00:02:19] froze to death. Despite everything, they did not give up, on the contrary,
[00:02:23] they decided to expand. I came and showed him a paper and said that I had taken
[00:02:26] the land, now they have three large plots, a lot of grapes,
[00:02:30] strawberries and blueberries. Immediately after moving to the village, our
[00:02:33] heroes had a misfortune. I fell
[00:02:37] from the roof during installation. Yes, I broke three spinal processes.
[00:02:41] The eldest son did not understand his parents and stayed to live in
[00:02:44] the city. Why do you need this, villages, you are always
[00:02:47] attached to this. A little later it turned out that there was
[00:02:51] another very serious problem. We have no road, we
[00:02:55] cannot deliver fodder, we cannot bring hay, we cannot
[00:02:58] bring straw. because the road is simply washed away, the road
[00:03:02] consists of clay. Despite everything, they believe in a bright
[00:03:05] future and arrange their life, watch in
[00:03:09] the project "I am from the village" on the TV channel
[00:03:12] Belarus24.
[00:03:17] A view from Minsk on what is happening in the world, the most notable events
[00:03:21] and topics that are discussed. Today, the Republic
[00:03:24] of Belarus has been ensuring its own food security for several
[00:03:28] decades, and we are a significant player in the international food
[00:03:32] market. A scientifically based structure of cultivated
[00:03:35] areas is in place, which is different for each region,
[00:03:38] adapted to soil-climatic, natural
[00:03:41] conditions. Today, all developments, all our varieties
[00:03:45] of crops that are grown here, are unique, they are
[00:03:49] adapted to our conditions. In a short period
[00:03:52] of time, we have done what Western European breeding
[00:03:56] schools have been doing for decades. Grodno and Samarkand
[00:04:00] regions signed a roadmap for cooperation during the visit of the delegation
[00:04:03] of Uzbekistan to the regional center. The document cemented
[00:04:06] joint plans in trade, industry, agriculture,
[00:04:10] tourism, as well as in education and the humanitarian sphere. Belarus
[00:04:13] is ready to increase supplies of meat and dairy products to
[00:04:16] Kazakhstan. Students of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and
[00:04:20] Informatics of BSU won six gold medals
[00:04:23] at the 33rd International Mathematical Olympiad in
[00:04:27] Bulgaria. Made in Belarus continues to conquer
[00:04:30] foreign buyers. A branded Belarusian ice cream
[00:04:33] store opened at the end of May is already a success.
[00:04:36] A look from Minsk every Saturday on the TV channel
[00:04:40] Belarus
[00:04:40] 24.
[00:04:44] Women, of course, are respected in any country, valued
[00:04:48] in any country, and also in Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan,
[00:04:51] women generally love themselves, they take great
[00:04:54] care of themselves, and women are always on a pedestal, at the top,
[00:04:58] they should always be.
[00:05:12] this leads to energy, just that from which everything originated,
[00:05:16] feminine energy was the most important thing. If you look at our temple
[00:05:19] architecture, then there will be a woman, she will be
[00:05:23] the main woman, well, I don't
[00:05:26] know, it's given by God a creation, without a woman
[00:05:29] nowhere, so may God grant women health,
[00:05:33] well-being, so that they are loved and carried in
[00:05:36] their arms.
[00:06:03] By the seashore, a bog oak, yes, yes, in our history it is so,
[00:06:07] a golden chain on the concrete oak, before you is real
[00:06:10] Belarusian black gold. Bog oak, the riddle
[00:06:13] lies in the name itself. A tree
[00:06:16] that has been bogged down in water for centuries without oxygen. Its uniqueness is that in the world it
[00:06:20] is a scarce resource, in Belarus, according to forecasts, hundreds of thousands
[00:06:24] of cubic meters. So we came to Gomel to see how
[00:06:27] history is literally raised from the bottom
[00:06:29] of the river.
[00:06:33] The Sozh river keeps secrets for millennia, this time on its
[00:06:36] surface there is a TV inspection, and the mysterious water depth under
[00:06:39] the journalistic gaze becomes clearer. The map
[00:06:43] shows all the points where underwater
[00:06:46] work was carried out, all movement routes,
[00:06:49] each flag indicates a dive, this is the flag
[00:06:53] of underwater operations, on the map you can see which
[00:06:57] section of the river was processed in order to
[00:07:00] raise this bog oak. More than four hundred points are marked on
[00:07:04] the map for each
[00:07:05] dive.
[00:07:10] Among recent finds, you will see them on the bank. Relict
[00:07:13] underwater oak forest, the weight of one trunk reaches almost
[00:07:16] 15 tons, to understand the scale by weight, it's like
[00:07:20] one gray whale, and the oldest find is about
[00:07:23] 600 years old. Let's dig deeper, how are bog oaks
[00:07:27] extracted? Divers descend to a depth of up to ten meters, in
[00:07:30] the darkness among silt and sand, they free the trunks from the soil,
[00:07:34] secure the cables, then it's the work of
[00:07:36] machinery.
[00:07:43] and, of course, human hands. The machinery lifts the trunks, but
[00:07:47] only a person finds, evaluates and decides. There are no random people here, there are those who know
[00:07:50] the river like the back of their hand, those who feel the bottom even without
[00:07:54] touching it. Bog oak itself
[00:07:58] is a unique material. Look, it lay under water
[00:08:01] for thousands and thousands of years, and
[00:08:05] at the same time it is very versatile, it has
[00:08:08] different densities from 350 to
[00:08:11] 1000.
[00:08:42] whose age has been confirmed by radiocarbon analysis, that is
[00:08:45] 8,110
[00:08:47] years.
[00:08:50] Over decades of work, specialists have raised thousands of trunks, but
[00:08:54] each of them is unique: some amaze with age, others
[00:08:57] with their pattern, and I can say that I have
[00:09:01] the most interesting oak that was found, the lifted length
[00:09:05] is 35-37 m, more than a decade, we only lifted such a
[00:09:08] long trunk from the water, the calculation
[00:09:12] for its... height was more than 50 m. In the cross-section of a bog oak
[00:09:15] we found woodworms
[00:09:18] that saw mammoths, all sorts of
[00:09:22] utensils, thousand-year-old dishes, mammoth teeth,
[00:09:25] this is the skull of a woolly rhinoceros, we
[00:09:28] lifted it from the bottom of the Sozh about 3 years ago, they died
[00:09:32] out 10,000 years ago, according to
[00:09:34] information from the Academy of Sciences, this
[00:09:37] was a young rhinoceros, its skull was preserved
[00:09:41] only because it got stuck in clay and
[00:09:44] the clay helped it, so to speak,
[00:09:47] to be preserved. Gold on the bottom in Belarusian, and
[00:09:50] now bog oak on the surface, but this is only
[00:09:53] the beginning of a long journey. Once in an oxygen environment, wet
[00:09:57] wood without special treatment can crack and
[00:10:00] turn into ordinary firewood. On the other
[00:10:03] bank, this picture. Work, if it can
[00:10:07] be called that, of non-professionals, incorrectly processed material
[00:10:10] literally thrown away.
[00:10:13] heritage.
[00:10:17] Returning to the right track, each trunk is immediately cleaned of
[00:10:21] silt, packed in airtight film, marked.
[00:10:25] We could determine that this marked
[00:10:28] material corresponds to this trunk, for example, it is
[00:10:32] 20, 22 meters, 23 for this
[00:10:35] trunk, it corresponds to this. So I
[00:10:39] see something here, this is trunk number six, number six,
[00:10:42] okay, understood, mm-hmm, good.
[00:10:45] Then the question of drying, the question of drying is
[00:10:48] also such a question, it's necessary that it
[00:10:52] doesn't warp, that mold doesn't form, sometimes it's necessary...
[00:11:03] which at the start reaches 200%, must
[00:11:06] leave, in return a pattern will appear. Bog oak, it's
[00:11:10] 100 years old, over these millennia, this is like
[00:11:14] a passport, a historical passport of a tree, by it
[00:11:18] you can tell when there were extremely cold
[00:11:21] winters, various climatic changes that directly affected
[00:11:25] the growth of floodplain oak forests, you can determine the level of
[00:11:28] groundwater, the duration of drought
[00:11:31] or floods, it's like -
[00:11:35] a stamp through
[00:11:35] time.
[00:11:42] What can we say about this cut, about this cut,
[00:11:45] the first cut - you can't understand anything, well, that is,
[00:11:48] look at the first color, I can just tell you by the color that
[00:11:52] this trunk is at least 3,000 years old, at least.
[00:12:10] Well, that means it had everything it needed in life, so it's a good specimen,
[00:12:13] yes. The next cut will be taken for analysis, everything is done in
[00:12:17] field conditions, because the wood must
[00:12:20] retain its moisture. Well, then, let's go, let's go
[00:12:23] look.
[00:12:28] The holy of holies from the cut, we immediately
[00:12:32] move on to science. In field
[00:12:34] conditions, here in the field laboratory, precise
[00:12:38] science is born, not from textbooks, but from living cuts, from the texture that
[00:12:41] has preserved the memory of every drought and every flood. All
[00:12:45] this while the tree still breathes the moisture of the river. I
[00:12:48] prepare cuts, here in a day I prepare
[00:12:51] five or six samples of cuts, this is...
[00:13:25] from logging, melioration, and wars. Their share in the country's forests
[00:13:28] has decreased to a historical minimum. This is a real
[00:13:32] mini-forest where planting material is grown to restore oak groves.
[00:13:36] Here, in field conditions, scientists not only study ancient DNA, but also
[00:13:40] model future plantings. In this
[00:13:43] jar you can see - successfully grown
[00:13:46] oaks, which are now in the process of rooting. This
[00:13:50] is a very complex process that requires an individual approach to each
[00:13:54] tree. Here, both regimes and cloning
[00:13:57] methods are selected individually. Here it's time to talk about what
[00:14:01] any tree starts with - the root. Water washed out the soft
[00:14:04] fibers, mineral salts made it hard as stone. Each
[00:14:08] such specimen is a finished sculpture of nature, though with a
[00:14:11] remark, it looks like even on your hand, it's like
[00:14:15] coal - and what gives it such a color?
[00:14:18] It's the reaction of tannins in the water,
[00:14:21] tannins interact,
[00:14:25] and they are precisely what allow the wood
[00:14:29] to be preserved. You will see how
[00:14:32] a product could be obtained, here it is, the material, exactly from
[00:14:35] such material you will then be able to look at
[00:14:39] the product, although you see, here it is, here it is, you see, how to
[00:14:43] make a product from it that can be used in
[00:14:46] everyday life, here is a natural
[00:14:50] bog oak root, about 3,000 years old,
[00:14:54] was extracted from...
[00:15:38] From bog oak they create things that live for centuries: furniture,
[00:15:41] sculptures, icons, desk sets. Each product is
[00:15:44] unique, because it is impossible to repeat the pattern created
[00:15:48] by nature over millennia. The master doesn't just work with wood, he
[00:15:52] listens to it, feels it and transforms it into art, it's like
[00:15:55] frozen history that can be touched. Every product made of
[00:15:59] bog oak is a true relic. Our main clients
[00:16:02] are, of course, Belarus and the Russian Federation
[00:16:06] to the countries of the Arab world,
[00:16:09] it is starting to gain popularity there, this
[00:16:13] sculpture was made from a tree
[00:16:16] 12 m long, the tree was very loose
[00:16:19] and this is all that could be carved
[00:16:23] from a twelve-meter trunk, as the trunk was processed, we
[00:16:26] saw that it would turn into a bear, the weight of
[00:16:29] any massive products made of bog oak is very large, they
[00:16:33] start from 100 kg and can reach
[00:16:37] a ton. By the way, it is precisely by color that specialists can determine the age of the tree.
[00:16:40] The older the oak, the darker its heartwood, from dark brown to
[00:16:44] almost black, sometimes with unexpected iridescence, which
[00:16:47] resembles either amber or noble metal. This is not just wood, but
[00:16:51] a work of art that does not require framing. Nature itself
[00:16:55] took care to ensure that each specimen was
[00:16:58] one of a kind. The stand presents
[00:17:02] samples up to 6,000 years old, each
[00:17:05] blank is individual in weight, yes, this one.
[00:17:20] Well, it's definitely worth saying that color doesn't
[00:17:24] always reflect age, because if
[00:17:28] bog oak was raised from a different deposition environment, where
[00:17:31] there is a different mineral, mineral composition, the process
[00:17:35] of bogging will proceed completely
[00:17:37] differently.
[00:17:43] Then begins the long, step-by-step journey to the warehouse, where
[00:17:47] the process of controlled drying is launched. This is a whole science,
[00:17:50] developed by Belarusian specialists. First, the humidity
[00:17:53] is lowered to 100% in conditions of almost 100%
[00:17:57] air humidity. In order to preserve it well, it is necessary
[00:18:01] to create certain storage conditions. Look,
[00:18:05] first of all, how it is all laid out. Here the thickness
[00:18:08] of the spans, spacings,
[00:18:11] intervals, dark environment,
[00:18:14] is specially calculated. Here, please, this is from the 23rd year
[00:18:18] of extraction, everything is marked
[00:18:20] here, I can show you
[00:18:23] the marking, this blue
[00:18:27] marking corresponds to the parameters of radiocarbon
[00:18:31] analysis. Only after going through all these years and stages does the bog oak
[00:18:34] begin its second life, the moisture leaves and
[00:18:37] that very pattern appears, which nature created
[00:18:41] for millennia. This is a trunk
[00:18:44] of a seven-thousand-year-old bog oak, sawn into
[00:18:48] such large slabs.
[00:18:50] Length 8 m, width, in the narrowest
[00:18:54] part 60-80 cm, in the
[00:18:58] widest part 1.20 m, 1.30 m.
[00:19:02] So, in this one slab
[00:19:04] there is a cubic meter of material. We have not observed such analogues
[00:19:08] anywhere in the world. I can say that these cracks are natural
[00:19:12] cracks that were formed many, many thousands of years
[00:19:15] ago, but in general there are no peripheral cracks
[00:19:19] at all, not a single one, look, pay attention, not a single
[00:19:22] fresh one, this indicates that it is well dried, well, and
[00:19:26] as they say, there is a lot of sand, here it is, here it is,
[00:19:30] please, a simple example, here is the sand, right here,
[00:19:34] this is death to cutting tools, you see,
[00:19:38] here it is. Did you know that Belarus has a national
[00:19:41] treasure that you can touch? This is the Xylotheque
[00:19:44] of BNTU, the only one in the country and the largest in Eastern Europe,
[00:19:48] a collection of wood, over 7,000 samples.
[00:19:51] The heart of the collection are samples of bog oak, they are arranged in 22
[00:19:55] rows by age, from several centuries to 11
[00:19:58] thousand years, that's how long the tree spent in water to
[00:20:02] acquire its unique properties. We can, of course,
[00:20:05] boast a little about our collection of bog oak, because we
[00:20:09] have 286 samples,
[00:20:12] the oldest sample that we currently
[00:20:15] have in the xylotheque is a sample of bog oak
[00:20:18] aged 10,500
[00:20:20] years. This sample,
[00:20:24] well, if you look at it,
[00:20:28] touch it, it's very hard and somewhat
[00:20:31] even resembles plastic, but in fact it's a transitional
[00:20:34] state of wood into coal. The artist named Time
[00:20:38] worked on this canvas for millennia, its palette from
[00:20:42] chocolate to anthracite, with oak as the canvas, which fell into
[00:20:46] the river when man was just beginning to write history, and this canvas does not
[00:20:50] have copies, there are few such patterns in the world, this is
[00:20:53] not just wood, but frozen time that nature
[00:20:56] created for centuries, such a unique resource as bog oak.