N1SRP — broadcast
20260808 013000 UTC
401 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] testified, i.e. reported,
[00:00:02] that they were called to attend
[00:00:06] meetings of the Serbian Progressive Party, and that somewhere, given that the
[00:00:10] quota has not been met when it comes to this factory, that it might
[00:00:12] now be, with these salaries, a punishment
[00:00:16] for the workers. How do you in the union view that? Have you received such
[00:00:19] complaints from individual employees? Officially, no.
[00:00:22] A lot of people are afraid to
[00:00:26] speak out. We publicly announced that any
[00:00:29] kind of mobbing and pressure
[00:00:32] should be reported to the union. We want to provide maximum assistance, legal
[00:00:36] assistance. They haven't reported, as I
[00:00:39] said, possibly due to that fear, but I
[00:00:43] don't believe that it's because the quota, the quota of 400, 500
[00:00:47] people, hasn't been met, and that's why we don't
[00:00:50] have our salaries today. We are mostly financed by
[00:00:54] our own resources and from contracts and from all those, as we say,
[00:00:58] "sales
[00:01:00] in retail," so I hope that
[00:01:04] there will be contracts and that we will improve in the coming
[00:09:11] The water level of the Danube is still low. What is the exact situation?
[00:09:14] Are there any signs of improvement? N1 reporter
[00:09:17] Ina Džakola is checking. Ina, what is the current
[00:09:21] level of the Danube in Novi
[00:09:23] Sad?
[00:09:27] Currently, the water level in Novi Sad, that is, on the
[00:09:30] Danube, is -78 cm below the reference
[00:09:34] point. And if you want to know for sure how much the Danube
[00:09:38] has fallen, you no longer have to observe the river from the bank,
[00:09:42] but you can come, as we have, to the
[00:09:45] river to see that where there used to be deep
[00:09:49] water, now sandbars have emerged, as
[00:09:53] some say, remnants of the Žeželj Bridge, but also
[00:09:56] remnants of the fortress where we potentially stand
[00:10:00] today. I will further discuss this situation with
[00:10:03] Borislav Teodorović, who practically grew up here on the Danube. First of all,
[00:10:07] good day and thank you for speaking to N1 television. What are we currently
[00:10:11] standing on? Well, we are standing on an incredible
[00:10:13] place, we are standing on the remaining foundations of the Petrovaradin Fortress that
[00:10:17] stood on the war island, which was once in the middle of the
[00:10:21] Danube and simply this has never emerged as far as
[00:10:24] I know in my life, and fishermen and people around me who have
[00:10:28] spent a lot of time on the Danube don't remember such a sight.
[00:10:31] I mean, I've really never seen this, so
[00:10:34] the water level is incredibly low for this time of year,
[00:10:37] I mean ever. They say it's a record
[00:10:40] low water level of the Danube, the previous record minimum was in
[00:10:44] '47 when it was minus 68 cm.
[00:10:48] You say you don't remember such scenes ever. What else besides this
[00:10:51] fortress has emerged from the Danube? Well,
[00:10:55] what we could see, mammoth remains
[00:10:59] and all sorts of things have emerged in the
[00:11:02] Danube area. Although here, the water level is incredibly low, so traffic has stopped
[00:11:06] again.
[00:11:10] The lowest water level for this time of
[00:11:13] year, ever. I mean, in the last 30 years that I remember, I
[00:11:17] live right on the water, I haven't seen anything close, not
[00:11:20] even close to such a low water level as it is today.
[00:11:23] Now you say you practically live on the water,
[00:11:27] what is the situation then on the
[00:11:30] waterway itself, are ships sailing, are cargo
[00:11:33] ships sailing, what is the situation there? Well, cargo ships haven't been moving for the
[00:11:37] last two or three weeks, I would say. Up until about a week and a
[00:11:41] half ago, white ships were moving, but I think
[00:11:44] they were without passengers, because they were quite out of the water. But for the
[00:11:48] last week and a half, traffic has completely stopped. Even
[00:11:52] some boats cannot leave their
[00:11:55] berths from marinas, so all
[00:11:59] marinas are in great danger of drying
[00:12:02] up. Now, you say you are constantly on the water, so what are the most
[00:12:06] critical points, where the Danube is lowest, and where you can see
[00:12:10] those sandbars, where are such sights?
[00:12:13] Well, that's here
[00:12:16] near Karlovci, there's some near Kok Čang, a little
[00:12:20] above, there's this one near Oficirac,
[00:12:23] then further up in Novi Sad,
[00:12:26] above Štrand, that is, above the Freedom Bridge, a large sandbar has emerged,
[00:12:30] and below this bridge that is now
[00:12:33] being built, further up towards Futog, you have across
[00:12:37] from Mačkovo, Mačak one, there Mačkovo Island,
[00:12:40] so well-known, has emerged. It's huge now, I mean it's never been
[00:12:44] like this, and even in front of
[00:12:47] Kamenyar Seven, an island has emerged, so now all
[00:12:51] the lowest points on the Danube are visible.
[00:12:54] It's no longer what we fishermen knew, that we used to pull nets and
[00:12:58] we knew where the depths were, where everything was. Now everyone can see where the
[00:13:02] depths are, where the shallows are, since everything has emerged. Yes, you say fishermen, I have to
[00:13:05] mention this interesting fact, and that is that your father was a fisherman
[00:13:09] and the people of Novi Sad remember him as Veljko Ribar, but in
[00:13:13] '99, when there was bombing, when the
[00:13:16] bridge collapsed, he then saved nine
[00:13:19] people from the Danube. So what would he say if he
[00:13:23] saw such a sight? Well, I'm sorry that he couldn't see such a sight, but
[00:13:27] I learned from him, I mean, where the depths are, where, I mean, I was
[00:13:31] fishing then and I would have liked him to be able to
[00:13:34] see it, yes, but knowing
[00:13:38] his stories, the Danube has never been like this, and also the stories
[00:13:41] of other fishermen. So this is, this is, this is
[00:13:44] something unseen, we hope it won't happen again.
[00:13:48] Now it's interesting, what we are currently standing on, but you say you hope that such a
[00:13:51] situation won't happen again. You are concerned that the
[00:13:55] Danube is so low, well,
[00:13:59] yes, yes, because that will
[00:14:01] change many things in the
[00:14:05] future. I mean, both
[00:14:07] traffic and a million
[00:14:09] things.
[00:14:11] It's not natural, I mean, it's not, it's not normal for the water level to be so low,
[00:14:15] for so long. The water level was low, not this low, but
[00:14:18] it happens that the water level drops sharply, to stay
[00:14:22] for, I don't know, two or three days, and then it suddenly rises. "That happens, but
[00:14:26] for the whole summer, meaning from May, in May, for example, the water level should have been around 500,
[00:14:30] 600, there should have been floods and whatever else, when the ice melts in the
[00:14:33] Alps, for the water to flow into the backwaters, into the
[00:14:37] Danube branches, for the fish to spawn. This year, it was 56
[00:14:40] in May, so the fish didn't spawn,
[00:14:44] I mean, traffic isn't moving, many, many factors
[00:14:47] are happening, negative ones, related to
[00:14:50] the low water level. Thank you very much for all the information and for speaking to
[00:14:54] the N1 television program." Well, you heard Borislav Teodorović, who practically
[00:14:58] grew up on this river. Today, it was measured
[00:15:02] 70, or -78
[00:15:04] cm below the reference point. So the Danube is at
[00:15:07] a record low water level, and you see, we are
[00:15:10] standing potentially on that fortress near
[00:15:14] the Žeželj Bridge, which was submerged as early as
[00:15:17] the mid-18th century. That is what has emerged from this
[00:15:21] situation.
[00:15:25] about necessary water sources, whether they are significantly
[00:15:29] lower due to unfavorable climatic conditions, we ask Zoran
[00:15:32] Stevanović, retired university professor and
[00:15:35] hydrogeologist. Good day, thank you for being here. For
[00:15:39] days, there has been talk about first
[00:15:41] of all, the low water level of the Danube. How
[00:15:44] does everything we've been witnessing for the past
[00:15:48] few weeks,
[00:15:52] from the perspective that things won't get
[00:15:55] better soon, seem to you as someone who deals with
[00:15:58] water? First of all, thank you for the invitation,
[00:16:02] both for me and for the recently seen boatman Teodorović, all this
[00:16:05] seems quite unusual. "The Danube really didn't look like this
[00:16:09] even in my many years. Recently,
[00:16:12] I saw a video circulating on the internet showing how Belgrade looked in
[00:16:16] 1961 and how many
[00:16:19] swimmers were bathing on the
[00:16:23] banks of the Sava River at that time. It resembles the present situation
[00:16:26] very much. I was quite small then, but
[00:16:29] I remember those excursions and that bathing area on the Sava
[00:16:33] on the other side of Ada Ciganlija." and indeed we are witnessing
[00:16:37] something quite unusual. There are still some other parameters
[00:16:41] that I would like to point out again this time,
[00:16:45] which might be interesting to our
[00:16:48] viewers. First
[00:16:51] of all, this is a specific hydrological
[00:16:54] situation. I am not a hydrologist, I don't like
[00:16:57] talking about hydrology, about surface waters, that's
[00:17:00] the task of my colleagues, hydro-engineers and
[00:17:02] hydrologists. Unfortunately, we lost a very respected professor this year,
[00:17:06] Stevan Prohaski, who was truly an expert
[00:17:10] on the Danube and its regime. The Danube is a
[00:17:13] strange river, many don't know, in the uppermost
[00:17:17] part of the basin it behaves like a
[00:17:20] mountain river, a subterranean river, a karst subterranean river. And
[00:17:24] it's incredible, I had the opportunity to see it, it loses a part of its water in the
[00:17:27] underground at sinkholes and that water goes to the Rhine basin.
[00:17:31] And for us geologists, that's a process
[00:17:34] which is very
[00:17:37] common even in those conditions, so-called underground piracy,
[00:17:41] one, one basin steals water from another, and
[00:17:44] piracy, that's right, the Rhine is indeed stealing
[00:17:48] water from the Danube, however, that is not the cause of such
[00:17:51] a low Danube, because it gets enough water in the downstream
[00:17:54] part, but that's a process that will intensify in the geological future,
[00:17:58] just as we geologists, when we look at
[00:18:02] the climate, every day the climate is different for us, because it's
[00:18:05] an evolutionary change, of course."
[00:18:08] No, the climate on the planet, what we are now
[00:18:11] witnessing is probably a combination of both
[00:18:14] natural and anthropogenic factors
[00:18:17] that influence that climate change. What's
[00:18:20] interesting here, what's
[00:18:24] interesting is that currently in Belgrade and its surroundings
[00:18:27] there is a climate that I had the opportunity to
[00:18:30] observe in arid countries, working
[00:18:34] on United Nations projects. "In
[00:18:37] countries where the rainless period
[00:18:41] begins in April and lasts until October, and you continuously have
[00:18:45] such weather without a single cloud, so almost six
[00:18:48] months, and people live there, and they have adapted, and there
[00:18:51] some vegetation exists, all of
[00:18:55] that, of course, goes without surface waters, mostly the
[00:18:59] waters are underground, and they must be brought to the surface to ensure
[00:19:02] both food and
[00:19:05] the possibility of living in those conditions. And what is
[00:19:08] happening? There, it is characteristic that during
[00:19:12] those months, there is very low evaporation, or rather, high
[00:19:16] evaporation due to very low air humidity.
[00:19:19] For the first time, I now see in Belgrade
[00:19:22] on the diagrams published by the Hydrometeorological
[00:19:25] Service of Serbia every
[00:19:28] hour that in Belgrade
[00:19:31] these days, the humidity is only below
[00:19:34] 30%, 25 to 30
[00:19:37] percent. And last night at
[00:19:40] 6 PM, it dropped to 18%
[00:19:43] as well. What is the consequence of this? We have
[00:19:46] extremely high evaporation,
[00:19:49] evaporation of water from all water
[00:19:52] surfaces. So the Danube, on the one hand, as a river that has a very weak
[00:19:56] inflow from other watercourses from the upper basins, thanks to
[00:19:59] this year, which was very poor in
[00:20:02] rain in those areas, also has the additional
[00:20:06] problem of intensive evaporation from the water surface. The Danube is quite
[00:20:09] slowed down, already from Belgrade, its regime, dictated by Đerdap and the Great Lake,
[00:20:13] begins, and we practically
[00:20:16] have a situation that is very unusual for our
[00:20:20] climatic conditions. We also have a high temperature
[00:20:24] of the Danube, 28 degrees is the temperature of the Danube, that's
[00:20:27] warmer than the average for which we run to the sea to
[00:20:31] swim there a bit and refresh ourselves, so we can do that
[00:20:35] here too. That will certainly have consequences for plant and animal life, but
[00:20:38] let's talk about these surface waters these days, what
[00:20:42] we have the opportunity to see. What about those
[00:20:46] underground deposits, how important are they to us, and
[00:20:48] what is happening to them? They are, I would say, essential. We depend
[00:20:52] on them, but we see this year, unlike the previous two,
[00:20:56] we have a more favorable situation from the perspective of water supply
[00:20:59] for drinking. Why? Because this year, in the
[00:21:03] area where we are actually, Southeast
[00:21:06] Europe, we had a good climate, much better than
[00:21:09] in Central and the Alpine region,
[00:21:13] meaning where the Danube is formed. Actually, we had a
[00:21:15] relatively even regime of precipitation
[00:21:19] and replenishment of groundwater, so we see that groundwater
[00:21:23] sources are not critically
[00:21:26] reported by users of water from public utility companies
[00:21:29] to raise alarms to the extent they did in the previous two
[00:21:33] years. The situation is not favorable, but we also see
[00:21:36] from something else, field agricultural
[00:21:40] crops, which until June were very good,
[00:21:43] fruit farming as well. So we have
[00:21:46] almost never had a year with such good, balanced
[00:21:50] precipitation and groundwater replenishment.
[00:21:53] Of course, now we see what I always advocate for: let's give
[00:21:57] priority to groundwater due to its quality and because it's
[00:22:01] better to preserve it in the underground than to expose it
[00:22:04] in large accumulations and large watercourses,
[00:22:07] to evaporation and the loss of part of our
[00:22:10] water resource. Now, how much
[00:22:14] should we be concerned? We are talking
[00:22:17] about, we are talking a lot now,
[00:22:20] intensely about climate change, water will obviously be
[00:22:23] one of the key, one of the key issues. How much
[00:22:26] and whether Serbia should be concerned
[00:22:30] when, first of all, let's talk about what is fundamental, and that is
[00:22:34] drinking water. Well, it must be concerned, of course, because we
[00:22:37] are witnessing that it is not an unlimited resource. I don't
[00:22:40] like to accept the theory that Serbia is poor in water, it's good
[00:22:44] as a warning factor that we should preserve it better, save it, and
[00:22:47] so on, but the essence is in the evidence. We
[00:22:51] are somewhere in the middle of the countries of the world, in terms of so-called water
[00:22:54] stress, we are somewhere, I think, 93 out of 170
[00:22:58] countries, so that's not alarming. What would water
[00:23:01] stress be? Water stress would be a situation in which you have greater
[00:23:05] water use, to simplify it for the viewers, than
[00:23:08] its replenishment. Actually, it's a situation in which we have
[00:23:12] pressure on water resources, that's one of
[00:23:15] the United Nations parameters that is used, and
[00:23:18] secondly, water availability, which is again seen as
[00:23:22] a certain amount of water that belongs to a certain country
[00:23:25] per individual. So these are parameters. So,
[00:23:29] where are we now? We are half of the world, and when we are
[00:23:33] half, that means it's the golden mean, right? Half, either
[00:23:36] in the upper half or in the lower half.
[00:23:40] The south is above us, right? Southern countries and this
[00:23:44] arid part of the world, they are the most vulnerable, of course. We
[00:23:47] are in that middle. It's interesting that even in our
[00:23:51] narrow space of the former Yugoslavia, three
[00:23:54] countries are much richer, uh, four of us,
[00:23:58] in terms of water resources, from the north
[00:24:00] and from the west: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
[00:24:04] Montenegro, which is among the richest countries in terms of
[00:24:07] water availability per individual, per inhabitant of that
[00:24:11] country. These four are richer. North Macedonia
[00:24:15] is somewhat poorer than us. If we look further south, Greece is
[00:24:18] even poorer. So,
[00:24:22] need to consider when thinking about how much
[00:24:26] water we have and how to further protect and use it. Now,
[00:24:29] what needs to be done? We are now talking
[00:24:33] in some capacity that it is what it is, that nothing
[00:24:37] is being done to change anything, but that we have
[00:24:41] somehow left it to nature to regulate it. What should be
[00:24:44] done to preserve these capacities, because we see where it's going?
[00:24:47] You hit the nail on the head.
[00:24:50] Nobody has done anything here for almost 20 years. That means no
[00:24:53] new water source has been opened.
[00:24:57] drinking water that is connected to underground sources, no
[00:25:01] capacity of a certain source has been significantly increased, there is simply
[00:25:05] a larger quantity of water and the alliance has been seized, for example, and some
[00:25:09] reservoirs have been completed that the citizens of those places
[00:25:12] would reluctantly use as drinking water, as is the case
[00:25:15] in Valjevo and the Stuborovni reservoir, so very little
[00:25:18] has been done and... little is being invested in what is
[00:25:22] most important for us, which is this water resource on which
[00:25:26] everything depends, agriculture depends, everything industry, everything literally,
[00:25:29] you know, and why is the situation
[00:25:33] not yet alarming, well,
[00:25:36] we can thank those generations of engineers
[00:25:40] from the 1950s until recently, up to
[00:25:43] 20 years ago, who actually left us this
[00:25:46] silver treasure so that we have those formed.
[00:25:50] drinking water sources in which we invest very little
[00:25:53] and these public utility companies today we are transforming
[00:25:56] into, let's say, uh
[00:25:59] some bodies that do not receive enough. support from
[00:26:03] their municipalities or from the state which are barely struggling,
[00:26:06] especially in terms of technical staff, they are getting worse,
[00:26:09] that is not a good perspective, so systematic investment is needed.
[00:26:13] We adopted a strategy in 2017, for example,
[00:26:16] with a plan projected to 2034, where
[00:26:20] the Jaroslav Černi Institute
[00:26:24] worked a lot on it, where it was planned to invest
[00:26:27] several billions, maybe
[00:26:29] ten, to significantly improve the situation.
[00:26:32] "There's nothing of that, it's not being invested there, even
[00:26:36] other strategies are overlapping this one, now from
[00:26:40] my narrow field, the strategy for the use of mineral
[00:26:44] raw materials has the idea of prioritizing those areas in
[00:26:47] spatial plans over areas where
[00:26:51] we have water resources and where we should protect and
[00:26:54] defend them, for example, Mačva, Jadar, repeatedly emphasized in
[00:26:58] public, an excellent reservoir of groundwater, 20
[00:27:01] cubic meters of water per second according to earlier analyses, this all
[00:27:05] needs to be verified, of course, but that is the amount of water that Serbia currently
[00:27:08] uses in its supply, and we are now on the verge of destroying it
[00:27:12] through some procedures or for some reasons
[00:27:15] of financial gain from mining, and by doing so, we are
[00:27:19] leaving generations ahead of us to worry
[00:27:22] a lot about how they will live in the future. And just to conclude,
[00:27:26] what do other countries,
[00:27:30] more developed countries, countries that... uh care about these
[00:27:33] things, what do they do when it comes to water, above all,
[00:27:37] since that's been our topic these past few days? Well, those
[00:27:40] that are in a better status than us, we can
[00:27:44] say, those we should look up to, for example, European Union countries,
[00:27:48] two-thirds of those countries use in their drinking water
[00:27:51] supply systems for the population 2/3
[00:27:55] groundwater, these are averages, so we
[00:27:58] should invest in opening new sources,
[00:28:01] expanding these sources. And one important thing that was included
[00:28:04] in the strategy I mentioned on managed water
[00:28:07] resources, we should start literally implementing it in practice,
[00:28:11] and what is it, you see, we planned there that
[00:28:15] 40,000 liters per second of water
[00:28:18] can be obtained by artificial recharge, what does that
[00:28:22] mean, that is this, that
[00:28:25] surface water in periods of high waters, floods, so when
[00:28:28] those waves that cause floods come, we should lead it...
[00:28:32] to soak the underground with it, to actually
[00:28:36] infiltrate it into the underground, to save it for those periods
[00:28:39] when we need it most, then there is no
[00:28:42] evaporation, there is no intensity of water loss
[00:28:45] that is currently, here it is, one
[00:28:48] cm in 24 hours evaporates,
[00:28:51] let everyone take it themselves and try it at home, a small
[00:28:54] experiment, they will see that it is true, so only of course
[00:28:57] in conditions of sun and open space. What is that
[00:29:01] amount, notice, it is at a level of about 600 per second, these
[00:29:05] are the needs of these five cities, for example, that want to
[00:29:08] build a new dam, Svračkovo,
[00:29:11] that loss of water these days
[00:29:14] is at that level continuously, 600 liters per second,
[00:29:17] an enormous enormous value
[00:29:20] and flow, we could introduce it into the underground in that period
[00:29:24] of high waters, and that was planned by the strategy, nothing is being done,
[00:29:27] and I will finish with this, well, I assume that this... implies
[00:29:31] some kind of infrastructural right, that it implies the preservation of space,
[00:29:35] you know, we are building EXPO on the most promising part in
[00:29:38] Sočin, which should have been precisely a field, an infiltration field
[00:29:42] for introducing those Sava waters from the upper part of the basin into
[00:29:46] the underground to be used by a linear series of radial wells
[00:29:49] that already exist along the Sava embankment, so we are creating
[00:29:53] traps for ourselves, nobody cares about it, nobody
[00:29:56] will talk about it publicly, so then we are actually...
[00:30:00] rubbing into something that will only come to fruition in later years,
[00:30:04] if we don't change that policy and strategy, yes, we'll see, thank
[00:30:08] you very much for this conversation, Zoran Stevanović,
[00:30:12] professor of geology, mining, geology faculty
[00:30:15] retired hydrogeologist.
[00:30:18] The low water level of the Danube
[00:30:24] also caused an energy crisis in Europe. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar
[00:30:27] thanked the inhabitants of that country for their unprecedented
[00:30:30] national unity in facing the heatwave
[00:30:34] drought during last week, stating that
[00:30:37] thanks to that, the energy security of the country was preserved.
[00:30:40] I am discussing this with journalist Gabor Bodis, who is reporting to us from
[00:30:44] Budapest, good day, thank you for speaking to N1 television, so
[00:30:48] is the worst part currently
[00:30:52] behind Hungary due to the low water level of the Danube,
[00:30:55] energy problems, especially when it comes to...
[00:30:59] naročito kada je...