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The U.S. military's new, expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces began in Germany on Sunday, with a goal of getting a battalion of about 500 troops back on the battlefield to fight the Russians in the next five to eight weeks, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Milley, who plans to visit the Grafenwoehr training area on Monday to get a first-hand look at the program, said the troops being trained left Ukraine a few days ago. In Germany is a full set of weapons and equipment for them to use. Read more: In Ukraine, power plant workers fight to save their 'child' Until now the Pentagon had declined to say exactly when the training would start. The so-called combined arms training is aimed at honing the skills of the Ukrainian forces so they will be better prepared to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks. They will learn how to better move and coordinate their company- and battalion-size units in battle, using combined artillery, armor and ground forces. Speaking to two reporters traveling with him to Europe on Sunday, Milley said the complex training — combined with an array of new weapons, artillery, tanks and other vehicles heading to Ukraine — will be key to helping the country's forces take back territory that has been captured by Russia in the nearly 11-month-old war. “This support is really important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself,” Milley said. “And we’re hoping to be able to pull this together here in short order.” The goal, he said, is for all the incoming weapons and equipment to be delivered to Ukraine so that the newly trained forces will be able to use it “sometime before the spring rains show up. That would be ideal.” The new instruction comes as Ukrainian forces face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months. Read more: Russian envoy hopes war in Ukraine ends soon: Hasan Russia also launched a widespread barrage of missile strikes, including in Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll in one apartment building rose to 30. Milley said he wants to make sure the training is on track and whether anything else is needed, and also ensure that it will line up well with the equipment deliveries. The program will include classroom instruction and field work that will begin with small squads and gradually grow to involve larger units. It would culminate with a more complex combat exercise bringing an entire battalion and a headquarters unit together. Until now, the U.S. focus has been on providing Ukrainian forces with more immediate battlefield needs, particularly on how to use the wide array of Western weapons systems pouring into the country. The U.S. has already trained more than 3,100 Ukrainian troops on how to use and maintain certain weapons and other equipment, including howitzers, armored vehicles and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS. Other nations are also conducting training on the weapons they provide. In announcing the new program last month, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the idea “is to be able to give them this advanced level of collective training that enables them to conduct effective combined arms operations and maneuver on the battlefield.” Milley said the U.S. was doing this type of training prior to the Russian invasion last February. But once the war began, U.S. National Guard and special operations forces that were doing training inside Ukraine all left the country. This new effort, which is being done by U.S. Army Europe Africa’s 7th Army Training Command, will be a continuation of what they had been doing prior to the invasion. Other European allies are also providing training.

The death toll from a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro rose to 29 Sunday, the regional governor reported as rescue workers scrambled to pull survivors from the rubble. Emergency crews worked through the frigid night at the wrecked multi-story residential building, the site of the worst casualties from a widespread Russian barrage Saturday. The deaths reported in Dnipro were the most civilians killed in one place since a Sept. 30 strike in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Russia also targeted the capital, Kyiv, and the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Saturday, ending a two-week lull in the airstrikes it has launched against Ukraine’s power infrastructure and urban centers almost weekly since October. Russia on Sunday acknowledged the missile strikes but did not mention the Dnipro apartment building. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in the war. Russia fired 33 cruise missiles on Saturday, of which 21 were shot down, according to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces. The missile that hit the apartment building was a Kh-22 launched from Russia’s Kursk region, according to the military’s air force command, adding that Ukraine does not have a system capable of intercepting that type of weapon. In Dnipro, workers used a crane as they tried to rescue people trapped on upper floors of the apartment tower where about 1,700 were living. Some residents signaled for help with lights on their mobile phones. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that at least 73 people were wounded and 39 people had been rescued as of Sunday afternoon. The city government in Dnipro said 43 people were reported missing. “Search and rescue operations and the dismantling of dangerous structural elements continues. Around the clock. We continue to fight for every life,” the Ukrainian leader said. Ivan Garnuk was in his apartment when the building was hit and said he felt lucky to have survived. He described his shock that the Russians would strike a residential building with no strategic value. Sorry, the video player failed to load.(Error Code: 101102)“There are no military facilities here. There is nothing here,” he said. “There is no air defense, there are no military bases here. It just hit civilians, innocent people.” Dnipro residents joined rescue workers at the scene to help clear the rubble. Others brought food and warm clothes for those who had lost their homes. “This is clearly terrorism and all this is simply not human,” one local, Artem Myzychenko, said as he cleared rubble. Claiming responsibility for the missile strikes across Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that it achieved its goal. “All designated targets have been hit. The goal of the attack has been achieved,” a ministry statement posted on Telegram said. It said missiles were fired “on the military command and control system of Ukraine and related energy facilities,” and did not mention the attack on the Dnipro residential building. On Sunday, Russian forces attacked a residential area in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevych said in a Telegram post. According to preliminary information, two people were wounded. Russia’s renewed air attacks came as fierce fighting raged in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar but Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting. If the Russian forces win full control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut. The battle for Bakhmut has raged for months, causing substantial casualties on both sides. With the grinding war nearing the 11-month mark, Britain announced it would deliver tanks to Ukraine, its first donation of such heavy-duty weaponry. Although the pledge of 14 Challenger 2 tanks appeared modest, Ukrainian officials expect it will encourage other Western nations to supply more tanks. “Sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine is the start of a gear change in the U.K.’s support,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said in a statement late Saturday. “A squadron of 14 tanks will go into the country in the coming weeks after the prime minister told President Zelenskyy that the U.K. would provide additional support to aid Ukraine’s land war. Around 30 AS90s, which are large, self-propelled guns, operated by five gunners, are expected to follow.” Sunak is hoping other Western allies follow suit as part of a coordinated international effort to boost support for Ukraine in the lead-up to the 1-year anniversary of the invasion next month, according to officials. The U.K. defense secretary plans to travel to Estonia and Germany this week to work with NATO allies, and the foreign secretary is scheduled to visit the U.S. and Canada to discuss closer coordination.

Prince Harry has said he had enough material for two memoirs, but that he held back because he didn't think his father and brother would “ever forgive" him. In an interview with British newspaper The Telegraph published Saturday, he also said that releasing his memoir wasn't an attempt “to collapse the monarchy. This is about trying to save them from themselves." “And I know that I will get crucified by numerous people for saying that,” he said. Harry's candid autobiography, “Spare,” sold 1.4 million English-language copies on the first day it was published. Many of its revelations and accusations were splashed across the global media this week. In the book, the 38-year-old revealed how his grief at the death of his mother, Princess Diana, affected him, and saw Harry detail his resentment at being the “spare to the heir." “It could have been two books, put it that way,” Harry said in the interview. “But there are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother, and to some extent between me and my father, that I just don’t want the world to know. Because I don’t think they would ever forgive me.” Harry also said in the interview that he worried about William's children, saying he felt “a responsibility knowing that out of those three children, at least one will end up like me, the spare. And that hurts, that worries me.” He said he felt this way despite William making it clear to him that “his kids are not my responsibility.” Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace haven't commented on Harry's book or his string of media interviews to publicize it.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday promised to provide tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine, amid renewed missile attacks by Moscow targeting the Ukrainian capital and other cities. Sunak’s Downing Street office said in a statement that he made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday. It did not say when the tanks were to be delivered or how many. British media has reported that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be sent to eastern Europe immediately, with eight more to follow shortly after, without citing sources. Zelenskyy in a tweet Saturday thanked Sunak “for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.” Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks, but Western leaders have been treading carefully. Read: Russia says it took Soledar in bloody fight in east Ukraine The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian forces. Poland has also expressed readiness to provide a company of Leopard tanks, but President Andrzej Duda stressed during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that the move would be possible only as an element in a larger international coalition of tank aid to Kyiv. Earlier this month, France pledged to supply its AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles — designated as “light tanks” in French — to Ukraine as well. Sunak’s announcement came several hours after a series of explosions rocked Kyiv on Saturday morning. An infrastructure target was hit in what Ukrainian officials said was a missile attack. Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper River, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Klitschko also said that fragments of a missile fell on a non-residential area in the Holosiivskyi district on the right bank, and a fire briefly broke out in a building there. No casualties have been reported so far. It wasn’t immediately clear whether several facilities in Kyiv were targeted or just the one that was reported hit. The Ukrainian capital hasn’t been attacked by missiles since New Year’s night, Jan. 1. In the outlying Kyiv region, a residential building in the village of Kopyliv was hit, and windows of the houses nearby were blown out, Tymoshenko said. Read: Rifts in Russian military command seen amid Ukraine fighting A total of 18 private houses were damaged in the region, according to regional Gov. Oleksii Kuleba. “There are damaged roofs and windows,” but no casualties, Kuleba said in a Telegram post. He added that a fire has been contained at a “critical infrastructure facility” in the region. Earlier on Saturday, two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the governor of the Kharkiv region reported. Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces fired two S-300 missiles at the industrial district of Kharkiv. The strikes targeted “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (outlying) region,” Syniehubov said. No casualties have been reported, but emergency power cuts in the city and other settlements of the region were possible, the official said. The attacks follow conflicting reports on the fate of the fiercely contested salt mining town of Soledar, in Ukraine’s embattled east. Russia claims that its forces have captured the town, a development that would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield. Ukrainian authorities and President Zelenskyy insist the fight for Soledar continues. Moscow has painted the battle for the town and the nearby city of Bakhmut as key to capturing the eastern region of the Donbas, which comprises of partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and as a way to grind down the best Ukrainian forces and prevent them from launching counterattacks elsewhere. But that cuts both ways, as Ukraine says its fierce defense of the eastern strongholds has helped tie up Russian forces. Western officials and analysts say the two towns’ importance is more symbolic than strategic.

Russia claimed Friday that its forces captured a fiercely contested salt mining town, in what would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine. There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian authorities of Soledar's fall. There have been conflicting reports over who controls the town, the site of a monthslong bloody battle in the grinding fight for Ukraine's eastern regions. Given the dangers there, The Associated Press could not confirm Russia's claim. Soledar is located in Ukraine's Donetsk province, one of four that Moscow illegally annexed in September. From the outset, Moscow identified Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk province as priorities, and it has treated the areas as Russian territory since their alleged annexation. “The liberation of the town of Soledar was completed in the evening of Jan. 12,” Lt. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, the Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, said, adding that the development was “important for the continuation of offensive operations in the Donetsk region.” Taking control of Soledar would allow Russian forces "to cut supply lines for the Ukrainian forces” in Bakhmut and then “block and encircle the Ukrainian units there,” Konashenkov said. Read more: Most Ukrainians left without power after Russian strikes Still, the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank in Washington, said that a Russian seizure of Soledar was "not an operationally significant development and is unlikely to presage an imminent Russian encirclement of Bakhmut.” The institute said that Russian information operations have “overexaggerated the importance of Soledar,” a small settlement, arguing as well that the long and difficult battle has contributed to the exhaustion of Russian forces. Just hours before Russia’s claim, Ukraine reported that there had been a heavy night of fighting but did not acknowledge loss of the town. In a Telegram post early Friday, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said that Moscow “had sent almost all (its) main forces” to secure a victory in the east. She said that Ukrainian fighters “are bravely trying to hold the defense.” Read more: Russian missiles cross into Poland during strike on Ukraine, killing 2 “This is a difficult stage of the war, but we will win. There is no doubt,” Maliar added.

As Russian troops wage a ferocious house-to-house fight for control of strongholds in eastern Ukraine, a parallel battle is unfolding in the top echelons of military power in Moscow, with President Vladimir Putin reshuffling his top generals while rival camps try to win his favor. The fighting for the salt mining town of Soledar and the nearby city of Bakhmut has highlighted a bitter rift between the Russian Defense Ministry leadership and Yevgeny Prigozhin, a rogue millionaire whose private military force known as the Wagner Group has played an increasingly visible role in Ukraine. Putin's shakeup of the military brass this week was seen as a bid to show that the Defense Ministry still has his support and is in charge as the troubled conflict nears the 11-month mark. Prigozhin rushed Wednesday to declare that his mercenary force had captured Soledar, a claim rejected by Ukrainian officials. Furthermore, his statement that the prize was won exclusively by Wagner challenged the accounts from the Defense Ministry, which described action by airborne troops and other forces in the battle for Soledar. The 61-year-old Prigozhin, who was known as “Putin's chef” for his lucrative catering contracts and was indicted in the U.S. for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, has expanded his assets to include Wagner, as well as mining and other spheres. He has scathingly criticized the military brass for blunders in Ukraine, saying Wagner was more efficient than regular troops. He has found a powerful ally in Chechnya’s leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has deployed elite troops from his southern Russian region to fight in Ukraine and also assailed the military leadership and the Kremlin for being too soft and indecisive. While both have pledged loyalty to Putin, their public attacks on his top generals openly challenged the Kremlin’s monopoly on such criticism, something that Russia’s tightly controlled political system hadn’t seen before. In the reshuffle announced Wednesday, the Defense Ministry said the head of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, was named the new chief of Russian forces in Ukraine, while the former top commander there, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, was demoted to Gerasimov’s deputy after only three months on the job. The Washington-based Institute of the Study of War saw the reshuffle as an attempt by the Kremlin to “reassert the primacy of the Russian Ministry of Defense in an internal Russian power struggle,” weaken the influence of its foes, and send a signal to Prigozhin and others to reduce their criticism. Prigozhin and Kadyrov have repeatedly criticized Gerasimov, the main architect of the Russian operation in Ukraine, and held him responsible for military defeats while praising Surovikin. Russian troops were forced to retreat from Kyiv after a botched attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital in the opening weeks of the war. In the fall, they hastily pulled back from the northeastern Kharkiv region and the southern city of Kherson under the brunt of a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive. Surovikin directed the retreat from Kherson, the only regional center captured by Russia, and was credited for shoring up command and increasing discipline in the ranks. But a Ukrainian missile strike on Jan. 1 in the eastern town of Makiivka killed scores of Russian troops and tainted his image. Read more: Putin in Belarus, eyeing next steps in Ukraine war Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya observed that Gerasimov’s appointment marked yet another attempt by Putin to resolve his military problems by shaking up the brass. “He is trying to reshuffle the pieces and is therefore giving chances to those who he finds persuasive," she wrote. "But in reality, the problem is not with the people, but with the tasks at hand.” Stanovaya argued that Gerasimov could have asked for “carte blanche in the heat of verbal battles against the background of some very tense discussions.” For Putin, ”this is maneuvering, a tug-of-war between Surovikin (and sympathizers like Prigozhin) and Gerasimov,” she added. Gerasimov, who began his military career as a Soviet army tank officer in the 1970s, has been chief of the General Staff since 2012 and was seen at the start of the conflict in February sitting next to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at a very long table with Putin. His appointment to directly lead the forces in Ukraine drew stinging comments from some Russian hawks. Viktor Alksnis, a retired Soviet air force colonel who spearheaded botched attempts to preserve the USSR in 1991, noted that Gerasimov had overseen the action in Ukraine even before his appointment. “This decision reflects the understanding by our political and military leadership that the special military operation has failed and none of its goals has been fulfilled in nearly a year of fighting,” Alksnis wrote on his messaging app channel. “Replacing Surovikin with Gerasimov will change nothing.” Read more: Zelenskyy tells cheering US legislators funding Ukraine's war ... Mark Galeotti, who specializes in Russian military and security affairs at University College, London, said the appointment handed Gerasimov “the most poisoned of chalices” as he now will bear direct responsibility for any more setbacks. “Gerasimov is hanging by a thread,” Galeotti said in a commentary on Twitter. “He needs some kind of win, or a career ends in ignominy. This may well suggest some kinds of escalation.” Galeotti also warned that frequent reshuffling of Russia's generals could erode allegiance in the officer corps. “If you keep appointing, rotating, burning your (relative) stars, setting unrealistic expectations, arbitrarily demoting them, that’s not going to win loyalty,” he said. Prigozhin, meanwhile, has taken advantage of military setbacks in Ukraine to expand his clout by making the Wagner Group a pivotal element of the Russian fighting force, augmenting the regular army that has suffered a heavy attrition. Ukrainian officials alleged Wagner contractors were suffering massive losses in the fighting in Soledar and Bakhmut, advancing “on the bodies of their own comrades.” Once convicted of assault and robbery, for which he served time in prison, Prigozhin in recent months went on a tour of Russia's sprawling network of penal colonies to recruit inmates to join Wagner's forces to fight in Ukraine in exchange for pardons. He recently released a video showing about 20 convicts allowed to leave the ranks of fighters after a half-year on the front line, while also making clear that anyone breaking ranks will face brutal punishment. Footage posted in the fall showed a Wagner contractor being beaten to death with a sledgehammer after allegedly defecting to the Ukrainian side. Despite public outrage and demands to investigate the incident, authorities have turned a blind eye to it. Observers have warned that by giving Prigozhin a free hand to run Wagner as a private army governed by medieval-style rules, the government has effectively planted dangerous seeds of possible upheaval. “In the end, there is chaos and the expansion of violence -– extrajudicial and illegal,” predicted Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment.

 Russia said Thursday that its forces are edging closer to capturing a salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine, which would mark an elusive victory for the Kremlin but come at the cost of heavy Russian casualties and extensive destruction of the territory they claim. More than 100 Russian troops were killed in the battle for Soledar over the past 24 hours, Ukraine’s Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said in televised remarks. Read more: Russia will launch new capsule to return space station crew “The Russians have literally marched on the bodies of their own soldiers, burning everything on their way,” Kyrylenko said while reporting that Russian forces had shelled a dozen towns and villages in the region in the past day. Russian forces are using mortars and rockets to bombard Soledar in an unrelenting assault, struggling for a breakthrough after military setbacks have turned what the Kremlin hoped would be a fast victory into a grinding war of attrition that has dragged on for nearly 11 months with no end in sight. “Civilians are trying to survive amid that bloodbath as the Russians are pressing their attacks,” Kyrylenko said. Serhii Cherevatiy, a spokesman for Ukraine’s forces in the east, said Soledar was hit by Russian artillery more than 90 times in the past day. Soledar’s fall would be a prize for a Kremlin starved of good battlefield news in recent months, after losing the significant city of Kherson in December. It would also offer Russian troops a springboard to conquer other areas of the eastern Donetsk province that remain under Ukrainian control, particularly the nearby strategic city of Bakhmut. The Russians’ tactic in the assault on Soledar is to send one or two waves of soldiers, many from the private Russian military contractor Wagner Group who take heavy casualties as they probe the Ukrainian defenses, a Ukrainian officer near Soledar told The Associated Press. When Ukrainian troops suffer casualties and are exhausted, the Russians send in another wave of highly-trained soldiers, paratroopers or special forces, to get a new toehold on the battlefield, said the Ukrainian officer, who insisted on anonymity for security reasons. Read more: Russia's hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov praised the “selfless and courageous action” of Russian troops, which he said is helping them to press forward in Soledar. “Gigantic work has been done in Soledar,” he said. Peskov, however, stopped short of confirming a claim by Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, who boasted about capturing Soledar on Wednesday. “There is still a lot to be done and it’s too early to stop and rub our hands, the main work is still ahead,” he said in a conference call with reporters. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Malyar, said at a briefing Thursday: “The enemy continues the assaults, but suffers significant losses and is not successful.” The AP was unable to verify the claims made by either side. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that the troops defending Soledar “will be guaranteed ammunition and everything necessary.” Russia’s Defense Ministry made no mention of Soledar in its daily briefing on Thursday. The ministry announced Wednesday that the country’s top military officer — the chief of the military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov — was put in charge of the military operation in Ukraine. He replaces Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who was demoted to deputy only three months after he was installed in that job. Ukrainian officials also said they were taking note of personnel changes at the top levels of the Russian military command, describing them as a sign that Moscow isn’t achieving what it had hoped. “Personnel changes would not occur with such frequency if they were doing well,” a senior Ukrainian military official, Brig. Gen. Oleksiy Hromov, said. Fighting continued elsewhere in Ukraine. The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported Thursday that two civilians were killed and a further eight were wounded in Russian attacks on Wednesday. Citing data from regional officials, Tymoshenko said that one civilian died and five were wounded in the southern Kherson province, where shells hit a maternity hospital, private houses and apartment buildings, while one person was killed in Donetsk. Two people were wounded in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia province, with one further civilian sustaining injuries in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk province. At the United Nations, Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova told the Security Council that Ukraine will seek a general assembly vote on a resolution supporting Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace formula that includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the Russians’ withdrawal. The plan that Zelenskyy presented to the Group of 20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia in November also includes the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the Russian aggression, and security guarantees for Ukraine.

Around some of their precious transformers — the ones that still work, buzzing with electricity — the power plant workers have built protective shields using giant concrete blocks, so they have a better chance of surviving the next Russian missile bombardment. Blasted out windows in the power plant's control room are patched up with chipboard and piled-up sandbags, so the operators who man the desks 24/7, keeping watch over gauges, screens, lights and knobs, are less at risk of being killed or injured by murderous shrapnel. “As long as there is equipment that can be repaired, we will work,” said the director of the plant that a team of Associated Press journalists got rare access to. The AP is not identifying the plant nor giving its location, because Ukrainian officials said such details could help Russian military planners. The plant’s director and his workers also refused to be identified with their full names, for the same reason. Because the plant can't function without them, the operators have readied armored vests and helmets to wear during the deadly hails of missiles, so they can stay at their posts and not join less essential workers in the bomb shelter. Each Russian aerial strike causes more damage, leaves more craters and more blast holes in the walls already pockmarked by explosions, and raises more questions about much longer Ukraine's energy workers will be able to keep homes powered, heated and lit in winter's subzero temperatures. Read more: Ukraine: Russia put rocket launchers at nuclear power plant And yet, against the odds and sometimes at the cost of their lives, they keep power flowing. They're holding battered plants together with bravery, dedication, ingenuity and dwindling stocks of spare parts. Each additional watt of electricity they manage to wring into the power grid defies Russian President Vladimir Putin's nearly 11-month invasion and his military's efforts to weaponize winter by plunging Ukrainians into the cold and dark. Power, in short, is hope in Ukraine and plant workers won't let hope die. In their minds, the plant is more than just a place where power is made. Over decades of caring for its innards of whirring turbines, thick cables and humming pipes, it's become something they have come to love and that they desperately want to keep alive. Seeing it slowly but systematically wounded by repeated Russian attacks is painful for them. “The station is like an organism, each organ in it has some significance. But too many organs are already damaged," said Oleh. He has worked at the plant for 23 years. “It hurts me so much to watch all this. This is inhuman stress. We carried this station in our arms like a child,” he said. Successive waves of Russian missile and exploding drone attacks since September have destroyed and damaged about half of Ukraine's energy system, the government says. Rolling power cuts have become the norm across the country, with tens of millions of people now getting by with only intermittent power, sometimes just a few hours each day. The bombardments have also forced Ukraine to stop exporting electricity to neighbors Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Poland and Moldova. Russia has said the strikes are aimed at weakening Ukraine's ability to defend itself. Western officials say the suffering the blackouts cause for civilians is a war crime. The plant that AP’s team visited has been struck repeatedly and heavily damaged. It still powers thousands of homes and industries, but its output is down significantly from pre-invasion levels, its workers say. All parts of the facility bear scars. Missile fragments are scattered around, left where they landed by workers too busy to clear up. Workers say their families send them off to their shifts with the words: “May God protect you.” Mykola survived one of the strikes. He started work at the plant 36 years ago, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union. “The windows flew out instantly, and dust began to pour from the ceiling,” he recalled. So he could immediately assess the damage, he put on his armored vest and helmet and ventured outside rather than taking cover in the bomb shelter. “We have no fear,” Mykola said. “We’re more scared for the equipment that is needed to provide light and heat.” Russian missile targeters seem to be learning as they go along, adapting their tactics to cause more damage, Oleh said. Missiles used to detonate at ground level, blasting out craters, but now they explode in the air, causing damage over wider areas. As soon as it's safe, the plant's repair teams scramble — a dispiriting cycle of destruction and rebirth. Read moreA:Ukraine's nuclear plant partly goes offline amid fighting  “The Russians are bombing and we are rebuilding, and they are bombing again and we are rebuilding. We really need help. We can’t handle it here by ourselves,” Oleh said. “We will restore it as long as we have something to repair it with.”

No, the public has not tired of hearing about Prince Harry. Sales for “Spare” have placed the Duke of Sussex in some rarefied company. Penguin Random House announced Wednesday that first day sales for the Harry’s tell-all memoir topped 1.4 million copies, a record pace for non-fiction from a company that also publishes Barack and Michelle Obama, whose “Becoming” needed a week to reach 1.4 million when it was released in 2018. The sales figures for “Spare” include hardcover, audiobook and e-book editions sold in the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. ″‘Spare’ is the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words,” Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of the Random House Group, said in a statement. “Looking at these extraordinary first day sales, readers clearly agree, ‘Spare’ is a book that demands to be read, and it is a book we are proud to publish.” One of the most highly anticipated memoirs in recent times, “Spare” is Harry’s highly personal and intimate account of his life in the royal family and his relationship with the American actor Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. Michelle Obama’s memoir has since sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, its sales holding up over time in part because of highly favorable reviews. The verdict is mixed so far for “Spare.” New York Times critic Alexandra Jacob called the book, and its author, “all over the map — emotionally as well as physically,” at times “frank and funny” and at other times consumed by Harry’s anger at the British press. In The Washington Post, Louis Bayard found “Spare” to be “good-natured, rancorous, humorous, self-righteous, self-deprecating, long-winded. And every so often, bewildering.”

In public, they present a united front — always. But Prince Harry has a very different story to tell about the British royals and the way they operate. Harry’s explosive memoir, with its damning allegations of a toxic relationship between the monarchy and the press, could accelerate the pace of change already under way within the House of Windsor following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Harry’s description of royals leaking unflattering information about other members of the family in exchange for positive coverage of themselves is but one of the more tawdry allegations in his book, “ Spare,” published this week. The prince singled out King Charles III’s wife, Camilla, accusing her of feeding private conversations to the media as she sought to rehabilitate her image after her longtime affair with Charles when he was heir to the throne. Read more: First day sales for Prince Harry’s tell-all memoir tops 1.4 million copies Far from the unity that is presented in public, the royal family and their staffs are depicted as scheming rivals, ready to stab each other in the back to make themselves or their bosses look better in the public eye. The palace that Harry describes resembles a modern version of the court of King Henry VIII, where courtiers jockeyed for the monarch’s favor and some lost their heads. The book leaves the impression of a deeply dysfunctional British royal family whose members are so concerned about the tabloid press that they are forced to make deals with journalists, says Ed Owens, author of “ The Family Firm: Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932-53.” And the public, when faced with this proposition, may think twice. “I think there needs to be some kind of reset, and we need to think carefully about what the monarchy is, what role it plays in society,” says Owens, a historian. “Because this idea of `we, the British taxpayers, pay and in return they perform’ — it’s really a broken and corrupting kind of equation.” Largely funded by taxpayers, the monarchy plays a mostly ceremonial role in British society these days — masters of soft power. But supporters argue that the institution still serves a vital role, uniting the country behind shared history and traditions embodied in both the grandeur of royal ceremonies and the day-to-day work of royals as they open schools and hospitals and hand out honors to those who serve the nation. News coverage of the royal family generally falls into one of two categories: carefully orchestrated public appearances or sometimes chaotic stories about the private lives of royals based on unidentified sources. But change may be at hand. The history of colonialism — so deeply intertwined with the crown — is being re-examined around the world. Protesters have torn down or defaced statues in British cities, and internationally respected universities such as Oxford and Cambridge are changing their course offerings. It all adds up to one thing: An institution that was once the symbol of the British Empire is facing scrutiny as never before. Charles, who became king after the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, faces the challenge of modernizing Britain’s 1,000-year-old monarchy to guarantee its survival. He has already said he plans to reduce the number of working royals and reduce the cost of the monarchy. This has been a long time coming, perhaps, but was delayed by one key factor: Elizabeth herself. Personal affection for the queen meant that the monarchy’s role in British society was rarely debated during her seven decades on the throne. Now that she’s gone, the royal family is confronting questions about its relevance in a modern, multicultural nation that looks very different than when Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1952. In Elizabeth’s world — governed by the mantra “never complain, never explain” — the sort of personal revelations in Harry’s book would have been unthinkable. He describes his mental health struggles following the 1997 car accident that killed his mother, Princess Diana, He recounts a physical altercation with his older brother, Prince William, reveals how he lost his virginity and describes using cocaine and cannabis. “Spare” is the latest effort by Harry and his wife, Meghan, to tell their own story after they quit royal life and moved to California in 2020, citing what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of Meghan and a lack of support from the palace. In the ghostwritten memoir, Harry, 38, alleges that Camilla forged connections with the British press and traded information on her way to becoming queen consort, essentially feeding unflattering stories on Harry and Meghan to the press in exchange for better coverage of herself. The allegations are particularly sensitive because of Camilla’s role in the acrimonious breakdown of Charles’ marriage to Diana. While many members of the public initially shunned Camilla, she has won fans by taking on a wide range of charitable activities and has been credited with helping Charles appear less stuffy and more in tune with modern Britain. Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover leapt to her defense, arguing that Harry was just thin-skinned. “I daresay some members of the royal family have passed stories to the press through their courtiers over the years, but it is absurd and naïve to infer that this was part of an orchestrated attempt to destabilize Harry and Meghan,” he wrote. “Royals are not puppets of the press, since — if they have any sense — they realize they can be biffed as well as praised. The wise ones know how to take the rough with the smooth.’’ But unlike Elizabeth, who famously issued a statement suggesting that “some recollections may vary” when confronted with racism allegations after Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, Buckingham Palace has responded to the first major crisis of Charles’ reign with silence.