(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.

The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Sep 13, 4:00 PM EDT
Ukrainian engineers making progress repairing Zaporizhzhya, IAEA says

Ukrainian engineers have made further progress in repairing vital power infrastructure in the vicinity of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was informed Tuesday.

The engineers are providing the plant with renewed access to a third back-up power line. This means all three back-up power lines to the power plant have been restored, according to the IAEA.

But, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano still warned that safety at the plant remains precarious as it is under the control of Russian forces, but operated by a Ukrainian staff.

While there has been no shelling at or near Zaporizhzhya in recent days, it was still occurring in the wider area, Mariano said.

Zaporizhzhya’s four main external power lines are all down and it is not currently providing electricity to households, factories and others.

-ABC News’ Will Gretsky

Sep 13, 2:21 PM EDT
300 settlements liberated in Kharkiv Oblast, deputy Ukrainian defense minister says

The Ukrainian Armed Forces said Tuesday that it liberated more than 300 settlements in Kharkiv Oblast.

Ukrainian soldiers have de-occupied 3,800 square kilometers since Sept. 6, according to Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.

According to Malyar, the Russian forces deprived local residents of any communication. They allegedly told residents Ukraine no longer exists, that the country already had a different president, and that Ukraine will not come for them.

Roughly 150,000 people have been freed from Russian control in recent days, according to Malyar.

About 1.1 to 1.2 million people are still living in areas occupied by Russian forces. Of those people, 300,000 are in Donetsk, 500,000 are in Kherson, and 350,000 are in Zaporizhzhia oblast, according to Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.

-ABC News’ Will Gretsky

Sep 12, 5:37 PM EDT
More than 20 towns and villages freed in 24 hours, Ukrainian military says

Russian troops have been surrendering en masse — even escaping the Luhansk region in stolen cars and bicycles, with some replacing their uniforms with stolen civilian clothes, according to a spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence.

“They understand the hopelessness of their situation,” the spokesperson said.

More than 20 towns and villages have been freed in 24 hours as the Russian military and its local collaborators flee, the spokesperson said.

Russian troops are allegedly making attempts to contact Ukrainian officers in an effort to independently negotiate the surrender of their units, as long as they get assurance of being treated according to the Geneva Conventions, according to the Ukrainian military spokesperson.

So many have surrendered that the country is running out of space to accommodate Russian prisoners of war, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said on Monday.

-ABC News’ Tomek Rolski

Sep 12, 12:22 PM EDT
Protection zone ‘urgently needed’ to end shelling near nuclear power plant

The International Atomic Energy Agency has established a presence at the site of the nuclear power plant in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia due to continued shelling in the region, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement Monday.

The mission, intended to ensure nuclear safety and security and to allow inspectors to take vital safeguard activities, has made clear of the “urgent and imperative goal” to halt the bombing and establish a protection zone surrounding the power plant, which is the largest in Europe.

In addition to the protection zone, the IAEA has established a second safety pillar that states all safety and security systems should be fully functioning and operating “normally and unhindered.” During observations, the safety team observed military equipment and vehicles getting in the way of systems functioning optimally, Grossi said.

The third pillar of the safety plan states that operating staff must be able to perform their duties without undue pressure or duress — an issue that has been raised many times since the Russian occupation of Zaporizhzhia began in March, according to the statement.

The IAEA is also mandating the maintenance of constant off-site power supply so that the power plant does not lose crucial functionalities, including the cooling of reactors and spent fuel, as well as uninterrupted supply chains and transportation to and from the site, which will be “especially crucial” should backup generators be needed again.

Effective radiation monitoring systems — both on and off site — and emergency preparedness, as well as continued reliable communication with the regulator and others, were also safety pillars outlined in the plan.

“Despite the ongoing challenges of the war, we have continued to implement safeguards in Ukraine,” Grossi said.

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(NEW YORK) — Ukraine’s stunning blitzkrieg counteroffensive in the northeastern part of the country has routed Russian forces and continues to make rapid progress, in some cases pushing back Russian troops back into Russia, U.S. officials said Monday.

While they acknowledge that the constant flow of U.S. military aid and equipment has helped “change the battlefield dynamics,” the officials also have been quick to praise Ukraine’s military for how it has employed the equipment on the battlefield and for anticipating what weapons it would need to eventually launch the offensive.

While there are few details of the long-anticipated Ukrainian offensive in the south targeting the city of Kherson, the surprise Ukrainian offensive launched near the city of Kharkiv has led to a dramatic turn of events.

In a matter of days, U.S. officials said, Ukrainian military forces have retaken as much as 1,200 square miles of territory in northeastern Ukraine once held by Russia for months, pushing eastward from Kharkiv as far as 40 miles. The Ukrainian advance northward from Kharkiv has come as close as 10 miles to the border with Russia as Russian troops hastily retreated in what Russia’s defense ministry called a “regrouping” of forces.

“On the ground in the vicinity of Kharkiv, we assess that Russian forces have largely ceded their gains to the Ukrainians and then withdrawn to the north and east,” a senior U.S. military official told reporters Monday. “Many of these forces have moved over the border into Russia.”

“We also assess that Ukrainian forces have very likely taken control of Kupiansk and Izyum in addition to smaller villages,” said the official.

Both cities were important to Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine, particularly Izyum, which had been used as the main logistical hub for its months-long assault on the Donbass region.

“We’ve seen the Ukrainians use to great effect, the capabilities that they have across the battlefield to change the battlefield dynamics,” the official added, referring to military capabilities provided to Ukraine by the United States and other countries.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the United States has provided $14.5 billion in military equipment, including Javelin anti-tank weapons, Stinger portable anti-aircraft missiles, howitzer artillery, and the long-range HIMARS rockets (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems) that can reach more than 40 miles behind enemy lines.

While that assistance was described by the U.S. military official as being “incredibly helpful,” the official directed praise at Ukraine’s military.

“Much of the credit, if not most of it goes to the Ukrainians and what they’re doing to employ these capabilities,” said the official.

A senior U.S. defense official complimented Ukraine’s communications with the United States to anticipate what gear it would need against Russia, such as requesting howitzer artillery to counter what they expected to be an “artillery battle the Russians intended to wage” to take over the Donbass region.

That was soon followed by Ukraine’s request for a counter to Russia’s advantage in long range rocket systems and its establishment of major logistical hubs and military headquarters far behind enemy lines.

“That’s when we started focusing on the ability of providing the HIMARS and GMLR systems (the rockets fired by HIMARS),” said the official. “So, it is absolutely a partnership and in listening to the understanding of what they’re seeing, and then seeing what we can do to provide them with capabilities to address that.”

Last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said that the United States had provided “thousands” of the long-range rockets fired by the HIMARS systems that Ukraine has used to strike at more than 400 Russian targets behind enemy lines, including ammunition depots, logistical hubs and military headquarters.

“They’ve had devastating effect,” Milley said in Germany last week. “Russian lines of communication and supply channels are severely strained. It is having a direct impact on the Russian ability to project and sustain combat power.”

“Russian command and control in the headquarters have been disrupted and they’re having great difficulty resupplying their forces and replacing their combat losses,” he added.

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(NEW YORK) — Ukraine’s counteroffensive in its northeast likely marks a turning point in the war and has profound consequences for Russia’s position going forward, according to military analysts.

The counteroffensive has seen Russia’s frontline in the Kharkiv region collapse in less than a week, forcing thousands of its troops to retreat as Ukrainian troops have recaptured hundreds of square miles of territory, officials said.

The defeat not only removes Russia’s ability to threaten Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, but also likely ends Russia’s ability to mount any major offensives in Ukraine again, the analysts said. It also will have a major knock-on effect on Russia’s capacity to hold its positions on the other fronts around the country. It means in the long-run, the war now favors Ukraine, they said.

“Ukraine has turned the tide of this war in its favor,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington D.C.-based think tank that tracks the war closely, wrote in an analysis. “Kyiv will likely increasingly dictate the location and nature of the major fighting, and Russia will find itself increasingly responding inadequately to growing Ukrainian physical and psychological pressure in successive military campaigns unless Moscow finds some way to regain the initiative.”

That does not mean the war will end soon, the ISW wrote — Russia still occupies around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory — and it is likely to continue into 2023, experts said.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive routed a Russian force that had been one pincer in an attempt to seize the whole of the Donbas region, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s minimum declared objective for the war. Ukraine retook the strategic city of Izyum, which had been the headquarters for the Russian effort to advance in Donbas from the north.

Izyum’s seizure means an end to the Russia’s hopes of taking Donbas, the ISW and other analysts said. A second Russian offensive group trying to advance from the south onto the city of Bakhmut has now “lost any real operational significance,” the ISW wrote.

Russian forces were already overstretched as they tried to seize the Donbas region, which made them unable to significantly advance for months, and painfully defending against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south, the experts said.

Russia has been unable to replenish its forces because Putin has balked at ordering a full mobilization or putting the country on a war footing, fearing that could lead to domestic unrest that could threaten his rule, officials said. As a result, Russian forces are increasingly numerically inferior to Ukrainian in some areas.

The Russian-appointed head of the Kharkiv region claimed Monday that Russian troops had been outnumbered 8-to-1 during the Ukrainian offensive.

The rout of Russia’s troops in the northeast — that saw them abandon dozens of tanks and vehicles — means it now must redeploy reserves that it does not have to stabilize the front there, experts said.

But moving some of Russia’s troops already deployed on other areas of the front risks giving Ukraine a chance to repeat its Kharkiv offensive elsewhere, hitting places where Russia has thinned its lines, according to the ISW. One potentially vulnerable area is the city of Kherson and the area around it west of the Dniepr river where Ukraine has already made it extremely difficult for Russia to re-supply its forces.

Russia is reeling from the rout in the northeast, its troops’ moral will be badly shaken. The risk for Moscow now is that the failure in the northeast could snowball elsewhere, triggering a domino effect as its forces panic and loses the will to fight, Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, told ABC News.

Without a mass mobilization, that is fraught with huge political risks at home, Russia has no hope of reversing the direction of the war, Muzyka said.

“It’s a horrible position to be in and actually there are no good choices,” he said. “They have to decide. The alternative is losing the war.”

“As a consequence of the north eastern rout of their forces, the Russians now have very few (if any) good choices. Their positions in the east are compromised and require a substantial realignment of defensive lines and logistics,” Mick Ryan, a retired Australian major general and fellow at Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote on Twitter.

The grim outlook for Russia is shared by Russian nationalist military bloggers, who have large followings on social media and are often embedded with their forces there. The bloggers are the most vehement supporters of the war, but recently have written highly critical posts about the Russian leadership, furious at how the invasion has been conducted.

They have demanded the Kremlin call a full mobilization and put Russia on a war footing, warning it is the only way to reverse the direction of the war.

“Not to recognise that Russia is waging a war is the greatest stupidity,” Yury Kotyenok, who posts under the account Voenkor Kotenok Z, wrote following the retreat in the northeast.

Recriminations over the disaster in northeast Ukraine also erupted unusually on a pro-Kremlin talk show on the channel NTV. Boris Nadezhdin, a politician, told his fellow guests Russia now faced a choice: “Either mobilization and full-scale war, or we get out.”

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(LONDON) — As non-working members of Britain’s royal family, Prince Harry and Meghan have charted their own future by working on lucrative independent projects.

What will happen to some of those projects in the wake of the death of Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, remains a closely watched question.

Shortly before the 96-year-old queen’s death on Sept. 9, Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, launched her long-awaited podcast, “Archetypes,” which quickly rose to the top of Spotify’s charts with its debut episode featuring Meghan’s friend Serena Williams.

This week, Spotify announced that new episodes of the podcast will be paused “during the official mourning period for Her Majesty The Queen.”

Whether Harry’s upcoming memoir will continue as planned is not yet clear.

Harry, the duke of Sussex and fifth in line to the throne, is scheduled to release a memoir this year that he has said will be a “firsthand account” of his life “that’s accurate and wholly truthful.”

“I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become,” Harry said in a statement released last year by Penguin Random House, the book’s publisher. “I’ve worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story—the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned—I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.”

Since leaving their senior royal roles in 2020, Meghan and Harry, the youngest son of King Charles III, have been candid about the difficulties they say they faced as senior members of Britain’s royal family, including sitting down for an explosive, tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey last year.

Harry’s relationship with some members of his family, including Charles and his brother Prince William, have reportedly continued to be strained, leading royal watchers to wonder what details Harry would include in his memoir.

At the time the book was announced, Penguin Random House said it would be an “honest and captivating personal portrait” of Harry’s life and that it would be released in late 2022.

“In an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time, Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him,” the publisher said in a statement.

Penguin Random House has not so far announced a change to the timeline for the book being published, nor has it said whether the book will be updated with details of the queen’s passing.

Harry and Meghan, who live in California with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were in England for charity events when the queen died at Balmoral Castle in Scotland.

On Saturday, the Sussexes appeared with William and Kate, the princess of Wales, outside Windsor Castle to view tributes to the queen and speak with members of the public.

A representative for William told ABC News the prince invited the Sussexes to join him and Kate.

The appearance marked the first time the two couples, once called the “Fab Four” by royal watchers, had been seen together in public in over two years.

Their last appearance together was at a Commonwealth Day service in March 2020 that was Harry and Meghan’s final engagement as senior working royals.

The two families now have homes close to each other in Windsor.

William and Kate moved this summer from Kensington Palace to Adelaide Cottage on the grounds of Windsor Castle, which is also where Harry and Meghan’s U.K. home, Frogmore Cottage, is located.

Harry and Meghan are expected to join the royal family as they mourn the queen’s passing with events scheduled to take place through her funeral on Sept. 19.

In his first public address following the death of the queen, Charles included the couple, saying, “I want also to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives overseas.”

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