Russia said on Sunday that its forces had destroyed a Ukrainian train carrying foreign weapons in the past 24 hours, while Ukraine reported on the same day that its forces had repelled Russian offensives in different directions, according to their latest updates on the conflict.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Russian army launched offensives in Kharkov, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Kherson and other directions, and repelled 17 Ukrainian counterattacks.
The Russian army struck a train carrying foreign weapons, destroyed a warehouse used by the Ukrainian forces for storing rockets and artillery shells, and targeted several locations where drones and unmanned boats were stationed.
Russian Aerospace Forces and air defense forces shot down three Ukrainian warplanes and 55 drones, according to the report.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces issued a war report on the same day, saying that there were 100 battles in the frontline areas on the day. In the Kharkov direction, Russian forces tried to attack Ukrainian positions in the Vovchansk area but were unsuccessful.
The Ukrainian side also said that the Russian forces used guided bombs to strike civilian infrastructure in Kharkov. In the Pokrovsk direction, Russian troops launched 16 attacks on Ukrainian positions that day, with Ukrainian forces repelling 13 of them, while three battles were still ongoing.
Russia hits Ukraine's train carrying weapons, Ukraine repels Russian offensive: reports
With the beginning of the cotton harvest season, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is anticipating higher yields from advancements in agricultural technology and mechanization.
Xinjiang is the largest production area of high-quality commodity cotton in China. The 2.47-million-hectare cotton growing area in the region has produced more than 5 million tons of cotton for six consecutive years.
The northern and southern parts of the vast autonomous region have different climates, different cotton varieties and also different growing periods. Currently, cotton picking started two weeks ago in northern Xinjiang, while the harvesting has just begun in the southern areas.
In Tumxuk City, located in southern Xinjiang, cotton farmers are using all-in-one harvesters to help them pick cotton, separate the flowers from the stalks and pack them into bundles.
"In the past, we picked the cotton manually. It took us more than a month to pick 100 mu (6.67 hectares) of cotton, and the cost reached 1,000 yuan per mu (about 2,106 U.S. dollars per hectare). Now, we use domestically produced cotton pickers to gather them, which have high efficiency and low cost. It now takes less than a day to harvest my 100 mu of cotton, with a cost less than 200 yuan per mu," said Turaxun Samat, a local farmer.
This year, Xinjiang has vigorously promoted the new cotton planting technology of drip irrigation under the mulching film at the appropriate emergence temperature, replacing the old method of irrigating before sowing. The technology can greatly improve the emergence rate while also saving water resources.
In addition, the precision sowing supported by BeiDou Navigation Satellite System and remote sensing monitoring by the agricultural big data platform have also been widely adopted across Xinjiang, contributing to the growth of cotton output.
"This year, a total of 1,057,800 mu (about 70,520 hectares) of cotton have been planted in Tumxuk City, and the unginned cotton yield is estimated at 451.4 kilograms per mu, an average increase of 11.7 kilograms per mu over the previous year," said Chen Yongsen, a member of the leadership of the city's Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
The cotton harvesting in Xinjiang is expected to end in early November.
Xinjiang enters cotton harvest season with higher yield expected
