CURRENTTIME — broadcast
20260806 030000 UTC
359 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:00] attack.
[00:00:38] Nobody wants to cooperate with Russia after this terror in
[00:00:41] Ukraine, it's impossible, Putin
[00:00:43] is a swindler, if the West
[00:00:47] closes the borders, these boys will hate us when
[00:00:51] they grow up,
[00:00:54] a Russian came somewhere, now I come to the store, there's a Russian here too,
[00:00:57] it feels like you have occupied us.
[00:01:02] and we can only assume that it was a kind of political blizzard,
[00:01:06] for Russia the door is closing, and we still
[00:01:09] have everything, everything will be fine.
[00:01:12] Norwegian Kirkenes,
[00:01:22] a picturesque land, rugged with fjords and sparsely
[00:01:25] dotted with small towns and... It is one of the least populated
[00:01:31] places in Western Europe, a point of contact for three
[00:01:35] countries. Norway, Russia and
[00:01:38] Finland.
[00:01:39] Before Latvia and
[00:01:43] Estonia joined NATO in 2004,
[00:01:46] this was the only border of the North Atlantic alliance, first with the
[00:01:50] Soviet Union, and then with Russia. This has been the case
[00:01:54] since the middle of the last century, and Murmansk,
[00:01:58] a strategically important port city, is only a little over
[00:02:01] a hundred kilometers away,
[00:02:03] but now, with the Kremlin going to
[00:02:06] war against Ukraine, NATO has become even closer, after
[00:02:09] Sweden and Finland applied
[00:02:13] to join the Alliance. However, among other
[00:02:16] northern neighbors of Russia, Norway was for Russia an open
[00:02:20] window to Europe until recently, while others
[00:02:24] rushed to close their land border crossings for fleeing
[00:03:10] Yes, such things happen here too, they even tried to close the editorial office, then
[00:03:14] Atli simply refused municipal support and
[00:03:18] added the words "Independent" to the name of his publication,
[00:03:22] independent. In Norway it worked, in
[00:03:25] Russia it didn't, now journalists from the observer are not
[00:03:29] allowed in. And the publication itself
[00:03:31] is blocked.
[00:03:35] We have quite complex relations with the Russian authorities after
[00:03:39] 2014. Then our editor wrote an article about the negative consequences
[00:03:42] of the annexation of Crimea for international cooperation in the north. And it
[00:03:46] was very negatively received by the Russian side, our
[00:03:49] editor was declared persona non grata in
[00:03:51] Russia. The entire editorial office of Barents
[00:03:55] is filled with souvenirs. And Atli and his colleagues have been to Russia
[00:03:59] many times. For journalists from a small
[00:04:01] Norwegian town, the neighboring huge
[00:04:04] country is a source of many interesting
[00:04:07] stories.
[00:04:11] It is very interesting to follow the events in the Russian North in the Russian
[00:04:14] Arctic, this region is huge, Russia has very high ambitions
[00:04:18] there, ambitions in the development of energy, transport,
[00:04:20] the use of the Northern Sea Route, and at the same time it is curious
[00:04:24] what happens to people in the Russian North, whose numbers are decreasing, what do
[00:04:28] these ambitions give them?
[00:04:32] Kirkenes is located right on the Russian border,
[00:04:35] a small town, the only one on this side, for many
[00:04:38] tens, if not hundreds of kilometers around,
[00:04:41] but to the Russian settlements of Nikel, Pechenga and
[00:04:44] Zapolyarny it's a stone's throw, tens of thousands
[00:04:48] of people live there, in Kirkenes something like
[00:04:50] 3,500, but if here the population is slowly but
[00:04:54] surely growing, then on the Russian side, on the contrary,
[00:04:57] it is rapidly declining.
[00:05:12] Murmansk, for example, in the late 1980s,
[00:05:15] the city was larger than Oslo. More than
[00:05:18] 4,000 people lived there. Today, only about
[00:05:21] 250 live in Murmansk. And such a sharp decline in population
[00:05:25] is observed throughout the Russian
[00:05:26] North.
[00:05:31] We witnessed this demographic catastrophe many times
[00:05:34] when we traveled across the Russian North, making films from
[00:05:37] the Unknown Russia series, including near
[00:05:40] Kirkenes. in the border town of Nikel, where we were
[00:05:44] very recently, last winter. Two years ago,
[00:05:47] the Norilsk Nickel corporation decided to close a huge
[00:05:51] ore processing plant in this town, and the town began to empty before
[00:05:55] our eyes, people started leaving, there was nowhere
[00:05:59] to work, they said, and they will build this, and they will build that, and
[00:06:03] I generally don't know how much they will build, but there is nothing
[00:06:06] anywhere, only closures,
[00:06:09] apartments generally cost pennies, completely unsaleable.
[00:06:12] nothing, however, before leaving, the corporation
[00:06:16] created a non-profit organization called Second
[00:06:18] School for training entrepreneurs, distributing
[00:06:22] loans and developing projects, then,
[00:06:25] before the war, the director of the Second School enthusiastically
[00:06:29] told us about the advantages
[00:06:31] of proximity to the Norwegian border, we
[00:06:34] see the desire, for example, of the Norwegians, for
[00:06:38] this territory to, as it were, prosper, that is, there is a desire
[00:06:41] to do joint business in this territory, this is a territory
[00:06:45] that in any case must live, exist, and so on, we understand all this, this
[00:06:48] is already a question, probably more geopolitical, yes, than
[00:06:51] political, how this very
[00:06:54] geopolitical question was resolved, we already know, there is no
[00:06:57] talk of cooperation anymore, and
[00:07:01] Finland even announced its intention
[00:07:04] to build a high fence on the borders with
[00:07:07] Russia.
[00:07:09] there were thousands of projects in which I participated. When the Foreign Ministers
[00:07:42] of Norway and
[00:07:53] Russia met here and signed a
[00:07:56] declaration.
[00:08:01] In the beginning it was very difficult, there was chaos in Russia, even food
[00:08:05] problems. We prepared ourselves, delivered it,
[00:08:08] helped. Then it was primitive, but then step
[00:08:11] by step. culture, sports, business, and the main step was
[00:08:15] the integration of the Russian economy into ours, here, in
[00:08:18] Norway. Rune even received
[00:08:22] the Order of Friendship from the Russian
[00:08:25] president for his work, although after the start of the war in Ukraine he
[00:08:29] refused the award, and the Barents Secretariat almost
[00:08:32] completely ceased cooperation with
[00:08:35] Russia.
[00:08:38] Now there is almost no activity there, nobody wants
[00:08:41] to cooperate with Russia after this terror in Ukraine. It is
[00:08:45] impossible. Putin is a
[00:08:46] swindler.
[00:08:51] One of the goals of joint work was the creation of a large
[00:08:54] tourist cluster in this region. Finland
[00:08:58] offered Lapland with Santa Claus and reindeer.
[00:09:01] Norway - crabs and fjords. Russia -
[00:09:04] a super-deep well, picturesque ruins of old
[00:09:08] enterprises and an adventure resort, which,
[00:09:11] however, was only in the plans,
[00:09:14] remained in the plans, while neighbors were already reaping
[00:09:17] the first tourist harvest,
[00:09:21] all these hotels were full, there were no
[00:09:24] free rooms, everywhere there were tourists from Asia and
[00:09:28] the same situation was in the Finnish Arctic, this is winter
[00:09:31] tourism, and tourists in winter spend much more than
[00:09:34] in summer, this is a big business, without the pandemic,
[00:09:38] all this will return, but only without
[00:09:40] Russia.
[00:09:48] I think tourism could be a solution for them, but open borders are needed, as long as Putin is in power in the
[00:09:52] Kremlin, it will be very difficult to establish any cooperation, the
[00:09:56] nineties
[00:10:03] were rough for
[00:10:04] Kirkenes too.
[00:10:12] the mining and beneficiation of iron ore ceased, that which
[00:10:16] the city had lived on for decades, the number of residents sharply
[00:11:25] of neighbors regularly stopped Valentina's car to
[00:11:29] check her for sobriety, or unpleasant
[00:11:32] remarks that customers of the store where she worked allowed
[00:11:35] themselves, I stand, serving her,
[00:11:39] scanning the goods at the cash register, yes, she tells me: the Russians have occupied us,
[00:11:42] but they did it very cleverly, I say, how? she
[00:11:46] says: I came to the polyclinic today, the floors are being
[00:11:49] washed by a Russian, at the reception
[00:12:32] called it local products, local products, now Valentina's fish
[00:12:35] patties go to stores and restaurants
[00:12:38] of Kirkenes, she would like to enter the Russian market,
[00:12:42] because on the other side of the border Norwegian products were always
[00:12:45] valued for their environmental friendliness, but now
[00:12:48] it will be extremely difficult to do this, if at all
[00:12:52] possible, everyone is in shock, everyone is" well, everyone is in shock,
[00:12:55] everyone is afraid to lose this friendship that we have built up for 30
[00:12:59] years, that is, when we stopped being afraid of each other,
[00:13:03] that is, Norwegians used to go to Nikel in the Murmansk region
[00:13:06] absolutely as if it were their own home,
[00:13:09] 30 km from Valentina's home meet the borders of three
[00:13:12] states - Russia, Norway and Finland, in some
[00:13:16] sense the borders ran right through her
[00:13:19] fate, she herself is from Russia, her husband is an ethnic
[00:13:22] Finn, and they live in Norway.
[00:13:25] have lived here for centuries, but there have never been conflicts here,
[00:13:29] maybe there were pouts or something
[00:13:31] else, but there were no armed
[00:13:35] conflicts,
[00:13:37] she hopes that someday this small patch of land will become an example for
[00:13:41] everyone, an example that you can be in different
[00:13:44] economic unions, because Norway is not in the EU, and
[00:13:48] Finland is in different military blocs, but live
[00:13:52] peacefully, work and trade for everyone's benefit.
[00:14:09] Kirkenes is like a large ship sailing across
[00:14:11] the Barents Sea, the city stands on a hill almost surrounded
[00:14:15] by water on all sides, the cries of gulls and narrow
[00:14:18] staircases, like gangways, by which you descend from one
[00:14:22] deck to
[00:14:25] another, intensify the sensation.
[00:14:29] On the central street, in a building with the port name terminal
[00:14:32] B, preparations are underway for the opening of a new exhibition. Artists
[00:14:36] display works whose creation was inspired by
[00:14:40] ceramics made thousands of years ago. Such exhibitions are not
[00:14:43] uncommon here. Modern art became another
[00:14:47] tugboat that pulled the impoverished
[00:14:50] commune out of the crisis in the nineties.
[00:14:53] A creative group works here, naming itself after a series
[00:14:56] of Edvard Munch paintings, "Pikene på broen", girls on
[00:15:00] the bridge. It is their merit that the small
[00:15:04] northern town has become one of the cultural centers of Norway and
[00:15:07] all of Europe, the festival capital of
[00:15:10] the Arctic.
[00:15:15] Bruen is a group of curators and producers working in contemporary
[00:15:18] art. It was created in 1996 by
[00:15:22] six female artists. The bridge in the name.
[00:15:49] a cultural and political mix of theater, discussions, music and
[00:15:52] cinema, and now here in Kirkenes, groups from all
[00:15:56] over the world come with their projects, including Russia.
[00:15:59] Moreover, part of the Barents спектакль events take place
[00:16:03] on Russian territory, or rather, they used to, and
[00:16:07] probably for the last
[00:16:08] time.
[00:16:14] independent artists, scientists and exhibition curators, many of them
[00:16:17] do not want to be associated with Russia, many people with
[00:16:21] whom we cooperated have left the country, this gives us
[00:16:24] a chance to work with them openly, without putting them at great risk, without
[00:16:28] creating any problems for them.
[00:16:31] February 24, when Russian tanks were rushing to
[00:16:34] Kyiv, and rockets were already falling on residential areas,
[00:17:34] A fairly large crowd gathered on the Norwegian side. People also
[00:17:38] gathered near Pavel, although there weren't many of them, but a message
[00:17:41] came that the event would not take place. Russian
[00:17:44] officials cited a blizzard and decided that the weather did not
[00:17:48] allow them to carry out their plan, but we did not see
[00:17:51] any storm. We can only assume that it was a kind of
[00:17:54] political blizzard. The Russian ban made
[00:17:58] the performance even more expressive. In Norway,
[00:18:00] the siren sounded, and the response from
[00:18:04] Russia was. Astrid says that the last Barents
[00:18:13] performance was one of the biggest challenges in her life, it is very
[00:18:16] difficult to build bridges with those who have already started to
[00:18:20] burn them, and this does not mean that next year at the
[00:18:23] festival there will be no Russian speech and that artists from
[00:18:27] Russia will not be able to present their projects, it's just that
[00:18:31] Russia itself will remain in
[00:18:34] silence. And It is important to see the difference between official
[00:18:41] culture, large institutions that are funded by the Russian
[00:18:45] state, and the freedom of creativity of independent
[00:18:48] artists, musicians and writers. They often
[00:18:51] risk their own safety for their voice
[00:18:54] to be heard. We need to give them a chance to raise
[00:18:58] that voice.
[00:18:59] The next Barents Spektakel will take place at the end of
[00:19:02] February 2023
[00:19:04] on the anniversary of the Russian
[00:19:08] attack on Ukraine, the festival organizers have never
[00:19:11] shied away from politics, reflecting the actions of societies
[00:19:15] and states at the center of every event, but what
[00:19:19] to do when Russia itself loses its borders daily,
[00:19:22] in all
[00:19:23] senses.
[00:19:27] It's very difficult to say what the situation will be in February next
[00:19:31] year, everything is constantly changing, we will have to
[00:19:34] improvise, we need to clearly demonstrate.
[00:20:07] You see the door, the command allowed them to
[00:20:11] train here, they told the school, you can use this
[00:20:14] room, until the war starts,
[00:20:17] In the Kirkenes underground bunker, no high-ranking
[00:20:21] Norwegian officials are sitting in fear,
[00:20:24] children are training, their instructor Willi, according to him,
[00:20:27] is a Norwegian Pomor, who was born and raised in the small
[00:20:31] town of Vardø, on the Varanger
[00:20:34] Peninsula, that's at... also in Norway and in
[00:21:50] Europe, few people travel to Russia,
[00:21:53] and it's very important to talk to people. How many
[00:21:57] times have I traveled by train, there's
[00:22:00] food, beer, conversations.
[00:22:02] Only this way can you learn the truth about the country. Willi tries
[00:22:05] to convey the experience and knowledge gained from such
[00:22:09] trips to his compatriots, including the most highly placed.
[00:22:12] He is confident that Norway should by
[00:22:15] no means close its borders.
[00:22:18] but believes that severing ties with
[00:22:50] eastern neighbors is a mistake, especially when
[00:22:53] it comes to children and his beloved
[00:22:57] sport.
[00:23:12] closes the borders, these boys will hate us when
[00:23:16] they grow up. Norway never sought
[00:23:23] to become Russia's best friend, formally maintaining a detached,
[00:23:26] cautious position, but at the level of human and
[00:23:30] economic relations it was always
[00:23:33] a good neighbor to it, what will happen next nobody
[00:23:37] knows, however, it's not hard to guess.
[00:23:40] The part of the economy connected with Russia
[00:23:43] is approximately 75 million euros. A large segment is
[00:23:47] the fishing industry. The largest private company here
[00:23:50] is a shipyard. 80% of their turnover is
[00:23:53] Russian orders. We have many Russian fishing vessels in our
[00:23:57] bay. And the Russian crab fleet is located in
[00:24:00] Kirkenes. But I don't think it will continue that way.
[00:24:04] Fish will continue to be caught here, if not by Russians, then
[00:24:08] by locals. Oil and gas, as they were extracted, will continue to be extracted
[00:24:11] further, and this is a significant help for
[00:24:14] the Norwegian budget. Well, the recent entry of Finland into NATO...
[00:24:18] will allow Norwegian military personnel to use
[00:24:21] the infrastructure of their neighbors again to raise the question of
[00:24:25] building the Rovaniemi-Kirkenes railway,
[00:24:28] even the old mines in Bjørnevatn, in the absence of
[00:24:31] Russian ore, may suddenly find their second
[00:24:35] wind.
[00:24:36] Before our meeting, I talked
[00:24:39] to people who are trying to start nickel mining. We will probably
[00:24:43] launch a train from Finland, where nickel
[00:24:46] is being sought, but our port remains. with Russia and dreamed of
[00:25:20] the unity of the peoples of this harsh polar
[00:25:23] region, to live in which, in his conviction, is only possible
[00:25:26] together, cooperating, because the north is cruel to
[00:25:30] loners, even if it is a large country
[00:25:33] that, having abandoned the rules of world cohabitation, decided
[00:25:37] to remain in solitude.
[00:25:40] Riga bus station, passenger
[00:25:59] buses depart from here daily, including to Russia and
[00:26:03] Belarus. The Latvian government plans
[00:26:06] to ban bus routes to these countries. Politicians refer to the conclusions
[00:26:09] of law enforcement agencies that bus service between Latvia and
[00:26:12] Russia and Belarus threatens national security.
[00:26:16] Passenger traffic between Latvia and Russia and Belarus has already
[00:26:20] been reduced to a minimum. Planes to these countries do not fly from Latvia,
[00:26:23] trains do not run, only buses remain.
[00:26:26] In a matter of seconds, an explosion destroys the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant.
[00:26:30] An impressive sight, but
[00:26:34] dismantling the entire plant takes decades, this
[00:26:37] happens because many materials are radioactive, they cannot simply
[00:26:41] be disposed of as nuclear waste used to be.
[00:26:44] Nuclear energy is experiencing a revival worldwide.
[00:26:48] But have operators considered decommissioning nuclear power plants,
[00:26:51] what happens when the plant's service life comes to
[00:26:55] an end? And most importantly, how much will its
[00:26:58] decommissioning and disposal cost?
[00:27:01] chemists, girls,
[00:27:06] dog handlers, sappers-divers,
[00:27:08] now there are more girls,
[00:27:11] and I think there will be even more later, because many
[00:27:15] guys will go to war,
[00:27:18] water is an important part
[00:28:35] pristine nature of Pshavi, a region
[00:28:38] that directly borders the Greater
[00:28:41] Caucasus Range.
[00:28:44] The highlanders, Pshavs,
[00:28:47] speak their own special dialect of the Georgian
[00:28:51] language, and in many ways differ from the inhabitants of other
[00:28:54] regions of Georgia, preserving their preferences
[00:28:57] in religion, traditions, and cuisine.
[00:29:01] Few people know about this, but Arabs still
[00:29:08] live in Central Asia, whose ancestors appeared here back in the days of
[00:29:11] the righteous Caliphs.
[00:29:14] For almost 14 centuries, they
[00:29:21] have preserved their identity, calling themselves Central Asian
[00:29:25] Arabs, or simply Arabi.
[00:29:28] 17 people died as a result
[00:30:02] of a Russian strike on Ukraine. The military claims they could not shoot down a single
[00:30:05] missile. Kyiv says there is a shortage of air defense and asks allies for
[00:30:09] help. This is a live broadcast of the Current Time channel. Here's what else we'll
[00:30:13] tell you about today.
[00:30:15] After the strikes on Russia, the
[00:30:18] oil refinery and the Wildberries warehouse are again on fire. We will tell you about
[00:30:21] the consequences of such attacks for the environment: chemicals enter
[00:30:25] the air and reservoirs. In Yekaterinburg, the car of the
[00:30:28] head of a drone manufacturing plant was blown up. On the same day, Vladimir Putin announced
[00:30:32] personnel changes in the field of unmanned systems. In
[00:30:36] Volyn, Polish and Ukrainian specialists discovered the remains of more than fifty
[00:30:40] victims of massacres during World War II. We will tell you how
[00:30:43] modern excavations affect the relations between Kyiv and
[00:30:46] Warsaw.
[00:30:50] Tonight, Russia launched 24 ballistic missiles at Ukraine.
[00:30:54] The targets of the strikes were warehouses and logistics
[00:30:57] centers. 17 people died during the