Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00testified, i.e. reported,
00:00:02that they were called to attend
00:00:06meetings of the Serbian Progressive Party, and that somewhere, given that the
00:00:10quota has not been met when it comes to this factory, that it might
00:00:12now be, with these salaries, a punishment
00:00:16for the workers. How do you in the union view that? Have you received such
00:00:19complaints from individual employees? Officially, no.
00:00:22A lot of people are afraid to
00:00:26speak out. We publicly announced that any
00:00:29kind of mobbing and pressure
00:00:32should be reported to the union. We want to provide maximum assistance, legal
00:00:36assistance. They haven't reported, as I
00:00:39said, possibly due to that fear, but I
00:00:43don't believe that it's because the quota, the quota of 400, 500
00:00:47people, hasn't been met, and that's why we don't
00:00:50have our salaries today. We are mostly financed by
00:00:54our own resources and from contracts and from all those, as we say,
00:00:58"sales
00:01:00in retail," so I hope that
00:01:04there will be contracts and that we will improve in the coming
00:09:11The water level of the Danube is still low. What is the exact situation?
00:09:14Are there any signs of improvement? N1 reporter
00:09:17Ina Džakola is checking. Ina, what is the current
00:09:21level of the Danube in Novi
00:09:23Sad?
00:09:27Currently, the water level in Novi Sad, that is, on the
00:09:30Danube, is -78 cm below the reference
00:09:34point. And if you want to know for sure how much the Danube
00:09:38has fallen, you no longer have to observe the river from the bank,
00:09:42but you can come, as we have, to the
00:09:45river to see that where there used to be deep
00:09:49water, now sandbars have emerged, as
00:09:53some say, remnants of the Žeželj Bridge, but also
00:09:56remnants of the fortress where we potentially stand
00:10:00today. I will further discuss this situation with
00:10:03Borislav Teodorović, who practically grew up here on the Danube. First of all,
00:10:07good day and thank you for speaking to N1 television. What are we currently
00:10:11standing on? Well, we are standing on an incredible
00:10:13place, we are standing on the remaining foundations of the Petrovaradin Fortress that
00:10:17stood on the war island, which was once in the middle of the
00:10:21Danube and simply this has never emerged as far as
00:10:24I know in my life, and fishermen and people around me who have
00:10:28spent a lot of time on the Danube don't remember such a sight.
00:10:31I mean, I've really never seen this, so
00:10:34the water level is incredibly low for this time of year,
00:10:37I mean ever. They say it's a record
00:10:40low water level of the Danube, the previous record minimum was in
00:10:44'47 when it was minus 68 cm.
00:10:48You say you don't remember such scenes ever. What else besides this
00:10:51fortress has emerged from the Danube? Well,
00:10:55what we could see, mammoth remains
00:10:59and all sorts of things have emerged in the
00:11:02Danube area. Although here, the water level is incredibly low, so traffic has stopped
00:11:06again.
00:11:10The lowest water level for this time of
00:11:13year, ever. I mean, in the last 30 years that I remember, I
00:11:17live right on the water, I haven't seen anything close, not
00:11:20even close to such a low water level as it is today.
00:11:23Now you say you practically live on the water,
00:11:27what is the situation then on the
00:11:30waterway itself, are ships sailing, are cargo
00:11:33ships sailing, what is the situation there? Well, cargo ships haven't been moving for the
00:11:37last two or three weeks, I would say. Up until about a week and a
00:11:41half ago, white ships were moving, but I think
00:11:44they were without passengers, because they were quite out of the water. But for the
00:11:48last week and a half, traffic has completely stopped. Even
00:11:52some boats cannot leave their
00:11:55berths from marinas, so all
00:11:59marinas are in great danger of drying
00:12:02up. Now, you say you are constantly on the water, so what are the most
00:12:06critical points, where the Danube is lowest, and where you can see
00:12:10those sandbars, where are such sights?
00:12:13Well, that's here
00:12:16near Karlovci, there's some near Kok Čang, a little
00:12:20above, there's this one near Oficirac,
00:12:23then further up in Novi Sad,
00:12:26above Štrand, that is, above the Freedom Bridge, a large sandbar has emerged,
00:12:30and below this bridge that is now
00:12:33being built, further up towards Futog, you have across
00:12:37from Mačkovo, Mačak one, there Mačkovo Island,
00:12:40so well-known, has emerged. It's huge now, I mean it's never been
00:12:44like this, and even in front of
00:12:47Kamenyar Seven, an island has emerged, so now all
00:12:51the lowest points on the Danube are visible.
00:12:54It's no longer what we fishermen knew, that we used to pull nets and
00:12:58we knew where the depths were, where everything was. Now everyone can see where the
00:13:02depths are, where the shallows are, since everything has emerged. Yes, you say fishermen, I have to
00:13:05mention this interesting fact, and that is that your father was a fisherman
00:13:09and the people of Novi Sad remember him as Veljko Ribar, but in
00:13:13'99, when there was bombing, when the
00:13:16bridge collapsed, he then saved nine
00:13:19people from the Danube. So what would he say if he
00:13:23saw such a sight? Well, I'm sorry that he couldn't see such a sight, but
00:13:27I learned from him, I mean, where the depths are, where, I mean, I was
00:13:31fishing then and I would have liked him to be able to
00:13:34see it, yes, but knowing
00:13:38his stories, the Danube has never been like this, and also the stories
00:13:41of other fishermen. So this is, this is, this is
00:13:44something unseen, we hope it won't happen again.
00:13:48Now it's interesting, what we are currently standing on, but you say you hope that such a
00:13:51situation won't happen again. You are concerned that the
00:13:55Danube is so low, well,
00:13:59yes, yes, because that will
00:14:01change many things in the
00:14:05future. I mean, both
00:14:07traffic and a million
00:14:09things.
00:14:11It's not natural, I mean, it's not, it's not normal for the water level to be so low,
00:14:15for so long. The water level was low, not this low, but
00:14:18it happens that the water level drops sharply, to stay
00:14:22for, I don't know, two or three days, and then it suddenly rises. "That happens, but
00:14:26for the whole summer, meaning from May, in May, for example, the water level should have been around 500,
00:14:30600, there should have been floods and whatever else, when the ice melts in the
00:14:33Alps, for the water to flow into the backwaters, into the
00:14:37Danube branches, for the fish to spawn. This year, it was 56
00:14:40in May, so the fish didn't spawn,
00:14:44I mean, traffic isn't moving, many, many factors
00:14:47are happening, negative ones, related to
00:14:50the low water level. Thank you very much for all the information and for speaking to
00:14:54the N1 television program." Well, you heard Borislav Teodorović, who practically
00:14:58grew up on this river. Today, it was measured
00:15:0270, or -78
00:15:04cm below the reference point. So the Danube is at
00:15:07a record low water level, and you see, we are
00:15:10standing potentially on that fortress near
00:15:14the Žeželj Bridge, which was submerged as early as
00:15:17the mid-18th century. That is what has emerged from this
00:15:21situation.
00:15:25about necessary water sources, whether they are significantly
00:15:29lower due to unfavorable climatic conditions, we ask Zoran
00:15:32Stevanović, retired university professor and
00:15:35hydrogeologist. Good day, thank you for being here. For
00:15:39days, there has been talk about first
00:15:41of all, the low water level of the Danube. How
00:15:44does everything we've been witnessing for the past
00:15:48few weeks,
00:15:52from the perspective that things won't get
00:15:55better soon, seem to you as someone who deals with
00:15:58water? First of all, thank you for the invitation,
00:16:02both for me and for the recently seen boatman Teodorović, all this
00:16:05seems quite unusual. "The Danube really didn't look like this
00:16:09even in my many years. Recently,
00:16:12I saw a video circulating on the internet showing how Belgrade looked in
00:16:161961 and how many
00:16:19swimmers were bathing on the
00:16:23banks of the Sava River at that time. It resembles the present situation
00:16:26very much. I was quite small then, but
00:16:29I remember those excursions and that bathing area on the Sava
00:16:33on the other side of Ada Ciganlija." and indeed we are witnessing
00:16:37something quite unusual. There are still some other parameters
00:16:41that I would like to point out again this time,
00:16:45which might be interesting to our
00:16:48viewers. First
00:16:51of all, this is a specific hydrological
00:16:54situation. I am not a hydrologist, I don't like
00:16:57talking about hydrology, about surface waters, that's
00:17:00the task of my colleagues, hydro-engineers and
00:17:02hydrologists. Unfortunately, we lost a very respected professor this year,
00:17:06Stevan Prohaski, who was truly an expert
00:17:10on the Danube and its regime. The Danube is a
00:17:13strange river, many don't know, in the uppermost
00:17:17part of the basin it behaves like a
00:17:20mountain river, a subterranean river, a karst subterranean river. And
00:17:24it's incredible, I had the opportunity to see it, it loses a part of its water in the
00:17:27underground at sinkholes and that water goes to the Rhine basin.
00:17:31And for us geologists, that's a process
00:17:34which is very
00:17:37common even in those conditions, so-called underground piracy,
00:17:41one, one basin steals water from another, and
00:17:44piracy, that's right, the Rhine is indeed stealing
00:17:48water from the Danube, however, that is not the cause of such
00:17:51a low Danube, because it gets enough water in the downstream
00:17:54part, but that's a process that will intensify in the geological future,
00:17:58just as we geologists, when we look at
00:18:02the climate, every day the climate is different for us, because it's
00:18:05an evolutionary change, of course."
00:18:08No, the climate on the planet, what we are now
00:18:11witnessing is probably a combination of both
00:18:14natural and anthropogenic factors
00:18:17that influence that climate change. What's
00:18:20interesting here, what's
00:18:24interesting is that currently in Belgrade and its surroundings
00:18:27there is a climate that I had the opportunity to
00:18:30observe in arid countries, working
00:18:34on United Nations projects. "In
00:18:37countries where the rainless period
00:18:41begins in April and lasts until October, and you continuously have
00:18:45such weather without a single cloud, so almost six
00:18:48months, and people live there, and they have adapted, and there
00:18:51some vegetation exists, all of
00:18:55that, of course, goes without surface waters, mostly the
00:18:59waters are underground, and they must be brought to the surface to ensure
00:19:02both food and
00:19:05the possibility of living in those conditions. And what is
00:19:08happening? There, it is characteristic that during
00:19:12those months, there is very low evaporation, or rather, high
00:19:16evaporation due to very low air humidity.
00:19:19For the first time, I now see in Belgrade
00:19:22on the diagrams published by the Hydrometeorological
00:19:25Service of Serbia every
00:19:28hour that in Belgrade
00:19:31these days, the humidity is only below
00:19:3430%, 25 to 30
00:19:37percent. And last night at
00:19:406 PM, it dropped to 18%
00:19:43as well. What is the consequence of this? We have
00:19:46extremely high evaporation,
00:19:49evaporation of water from all water
00:19:52surfaces. So the Danube, on the one hand, as a river that has a very weak
00:19:56inflow from other watercourses from the upper basins, thanks to
00:19:59this year, which was very poor in
00:20:02rain in those areas, also has the additional
00:20:06problem of intensive evaporation from the water surface. The Danube is quite
00:20:09slowed down, already from Belgrade, its regime, dictated by Đerdap and the Great Lake,
00:20:13begins, and we practically
00:20:16have a situation that is very unusual for our
00:20:20climatic conditions. We also have a high temperature
00:20:24of the Danube, 28 degrees is the temperature of the Danube, that's
00:20:27warmer than the average for which we run to the sea to
00:20:31swim there a bit and refresh ourselves, so we can do that
00:20:35here too. That will certainly have consequences for plant and animal life, but
00:20:38let's talk about these surface waters these days, what
00:20:42we have the opportunity to see. What about those
00:20:46underground deposits, how important are they to us, and
00:20:48what is happening to them? They are, I would say, essential. We depend
00:20:52on them, but we see this year, unlike the previous two,
00:20:56we have a more favorable situation from the perspective of water supply
00:20:59for drinking. Why? Because this year, in the
00:21:03area where we are actually, Southeast
00:21:06Europe, we had a good climate, much better than
00:21:09in Central and the Alpine region,
00:21:13meaning where the Danube is formed. Actually, we had a
00:21:15relatively even regime of precipitation
00:21:19and replenishment of groundwater, so we see that groundwater
00:21:23sources are not critically
00:21:26reported by users of water from public utility companies
00:21:29to raise alarms to the extent they did in the previous two
00:21:33years. The situation is not favorable, but we also see
00:21:36from something else, field agricultural
00:21:40crops, which until June were very good,
00:21:43fruit farming as well. So we have
00:21:46almost never had a year with such good, balanced
00:21:50precipitation and groundwater replenishment.
00:21:53Of course, now we see what I always advocate for: let's give
00:21:57priority to groundwater due to its quality and because it's
00:22:01better to preserve it in the underground than to expose it
00:22:04in large accumulations and large watercourses,
00:22:07to evaporation and the loss of part of our
00:22:10water resource. Now, how much
00:22:14should we be concerned? We are talking
00:22:17about, we are talking a lot now,
00:22:20intensely about climate change, water will obviously be
00:22:23one of the key, one of the key issues. How much
00:22:26and whether Serbia should be concerned
00:22:30when, first of all, let's talk about what is fundamental, and that is
00:22:34drinking water. Well, it must be concerned, of course, because we
00:22:37are witnessing that it is not an unlimited resource. I don't
00:22:40like to accept the theory that Serbia is poor in water, it's good
00:22:44as a warning factor that we should preserve it better, save it, and
00:22:47so on, but the essence is in the evidence. We
00:22:51are somewhere in the middle of the countries of the world, in terms of so-called water
00:22:54stress, we are somewhere, I think, 93 out of 170
00:22:58countries, so that's not alarming. What would water
00:23:01stress be? Water stress would be a situation in which you have greater
00:23:05water use, to simplify it for the viewers, than
00:23:08its replenishment. Actually, it's a situation in which we have
00:23:12pressure on water resources, that's one of
00:23:15the United Nations parameters that is used, and
00:23:18secondly, water availability, which is again seen as
00:23:22a certain amount of water that belongs to a certain country
00:23:25per individual. So these are parameters. So,
00:23:29where are we now? We are half of the world, and when we are
00:23:33half, that means it's the golden mean, right? Half, either
00:23:36in the upper half or in the lower half.
00:23:40The south is above us, right? Southern countries and this
00:23:44arid part of the world, they are the most vulnerable, of course. We
00:23:47are in that middle. It's interesting that even in our
00:23:51narrow space of the former Yugoslavia, three
00:23:54countries are much richer, uh, four of us,
00:23:58in terms of water resources, from the north
00:24:00and from the west: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
00:24:04Montenegro, which is among the richest countries in terms of
00:24:07water availability per individual, per inhabitant of that
00:24:11country. These four are richer. North Macedonia
00:24:15is somewhat poorer than us. If we look further south, Greece is
00:24:18even poorer. So,
00:24:22need to consider when thinking about how much
00:24:26water we have and how to further protect and use it. Now,
00:24:29what needs to be done? We are now talking
00:24:33in some capacity that it is what it is, that nothing
00:24:37is being done to change anything, but that we have
00:24:41somehow left it to nature to regulate it. What should be
00:24:44done to preserve these capacities, because we see where it's going?
00:24:47You hit the nail on the head.
00:24:50Nobody has done anything here for almost 20 years. That means no
00:24:53new water source has been opened.
00:24:57drinking water that is connected to underground sources, no
00:25:01capacity of a certain source has been significantly increased, there is simply
00:25:05a larger quantity of water and the alliance has been seized, for example, and some
00:25:09reservoirs have been completed that the citizens of those places
00:25:12would reluctantly use as drinking water, as is the case
00:25:15in Valjevo and the Stuborovni reservoir, so very little
00:25:18has been done and... little is being invested in what is
00:25:22most important for us, which is this water resource on which
00:25:26everything depends, agriculture depends, everything industry, everything literally,
00:25:29you know, and why is the situation
00:25:33not yet alarming, well,
00:25:36we can thank those generations of engineers
00:25:40from the 1950s until recently, up to
00:25:4320 years ago, who actually left us this
00:25:46silver treasure so that we have those formed.
00:25:50drinking water sources in which we invest very little
00:25:53and these public utility companies today we are transforming
00:25:56into, let's say, uh
00:25:59some bodies that do not receive enough. support from
00:26:03their municipalities or from the state which are barely struggling,
00:26:06especially in terms of technical staff, they are getting worse,
00:26:09that is not a good perspective, so systematic investment is needed.
00:26:13We adopted a strategy in 2017, for example,
00:26:16with a plan projected to 2034, where
00:26:20the Jaroslav Černi Institute
00:26:24worked a lot on it, where it was planned to invest
00:26:27several billions, maybe
00:26:29ten, to significantly improve the situation.
00:26:32"There's nothing of that, it's not being invested there, even
00:26:36other strategies are overlapping this one, now from
00:26:40my narrow field, the strategy for the use of mineral
00:26:44raw materials has the idea of prioritizing those areas in
00:26:47spatial plans over areas where
00:26:51we have water resources and where we should protect and
00:26:54defend them, for example, Mačva, Jadar, repeatedly emphasized in
00:26:58public, an excellent reservoir of groundwater, 20
00:27:01cubic meters of water per second according to earlier analyses, this all
00:27:05needs to be verified, of course, but that is the amount of water that Serbia currently
00:27:08uses in its supply, and we are now on the verge of destroying it
00:27:12through some procedures or for some reasons
00:27:15of financial gain from mining, and by doing so, we are
00:27:19leaving generations ahead of us to worry
00:27:22a lot about how they will live in the future. And just to conclude,
00:27:26what do other countries,
00:27:30more developed countries, countries that... uh care about these
00:27:33things, what do they do when it comes to water, above all,
00:27:37since that's been our topic these past few days? Well, those
00:27:40that are in a better status than us, we can
00:27:44say, those we should look up to, for example, European Union countries,
00:27:48two-thirds of those countries use in their drinking water
00:27:51supply systems for the population 2/3
00:27:55groundwater, these are averages, so we
00:27:58should invest in opening new sources,
00:28:01expanding these sources. And one important thing that was included
00:28:04in the strategy I mentioned on managed water
00:28:07resources, we should start literally implementing it in practice,
00:28:11and what is it, you see, we planned there that
00:28:1540,000 liters per second of water
00:28:18can be obtained by artificial recharge, what does that
00:28:22mean, that is this, that
00:28:25surface water in periods of high waters, floods, so when
00:28:28those waves that cause floods come, we should lead it...
00:28:32to soak the underground with it, to actually
00:28:36infiltrate it into the underground, to save it for those periods
00:28:39when we need it most, then there is no
00:28:42evaporation, there is no intensity of water loss
00:28:45that is currently, here it is, one
00:28:48cm in 24 hours evaporates,
00:28:51let everyone take it themselves and try it at home, a small
00:28:54experiment, they will see that it is true, so only of course
00:28:57in conditions of sun and open space. What is that
00:29:01amount, notice, it is at a level of about 600 per second, these
00:29:05are the needs of these five cities, for example, that want to
00:29:08build a new dam, Svračkovo,
00:29:11that loss of water these days
00:29:14is at that level continuously, 600 liters per second,
00:29:17an enormous enormous value
00:29:20and flow, we could introduce it into the underground in that period
00:29:24of high waters, and that was planned by the strategy, nothing is being done,
00:29:27and I will finish with this, well, I assume that this... implies
00:29:31some kind of infrastructural right, that it implies the preservation of space,
00:29:35you know, we are building EXPO on the most promising part in
00:29:38Sočin, which should have been precisely a field, an infiltration field
00:29:42for introducing those Sava waters from the upper part of the basin into
00:29:46the underground to be used by a linear series of radial wells
00:29:49that already exist along the Sava embankment, so we are creating
00:29:53traps for ourselves, nobody cares about it, nobody
00:29:56will talk about it publicly, so then we are actually...
00:30:00rubbing into something that will only come to fruition in later years,
00:30:04if we don't change that policy and strategy, yes, we'll see, thank
00:30:08you very much for this conversation, Zoran Stevanović,
00:30:12professor of geology, mining, geology faculty
00:30:15retired hydrogeologist.
00:30:18The low water level of the Danube
00:30:24also caused an energy crisis in Europe. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar
00:30:27thanked the inhabitants of that country for their unprecedented
00:30:30national unity in facing the heatwave
00:30:34drought during last week, stating that
00:30:37thanks to that, the energy security of the country was preserved.
00:30:40I am discussing this with journalist Gabor Bodis, who is reporting to us from
00:30:44Budapest, good day, thank you for speaking to N1 television, so
00:30:48is the worst part currently
00:30:52behind Hungary due to the low water level of the Danube,
00:30:55energy problems, especially when it comes to...
00:30:59naročito kada je...