From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernice and this is The Daily.

The tide appears to be turning in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian forces claiming to have retaken more than 40 towns and just a matter of days.

Crippling Russia's grip in the Harkiv region and forcing the Russians to retreat.

After the weekend, the Ukrainian military stunned the world by taking hundreds of miles of territory back from Russia.

Ukrainian troops have raised their flag in multiple towns and villages previously occupied by Russian troops.

Ukraine!

Their biggest victory since the beginning of the war.

Ukraine!

Today, my colleague Eric Schmidt on Ukraine's success, Russia's failure and how the war in Ukraine has reached a critical point.

It's Tuesday, September 13th.

So, Eric, we've been seeing all of these headlines coming out of Ukraine over the weekend about how there have been this string of successes.

How the Ukrainian military has made this huge advance.

And that seems kind of remarkable, right?

Because in a lot of ways, the war had really settled into this kind of stalemate for a number of months now.

I think that's right. It really was kind of a grinding conflict.

What we saw was over the weekend and a few days before that was a sharp jolt that kind of jump started the war again with this dramatic blitzkrieg on the part of the Ukrainians.

So, how did the Ukrainians pull it off?

I think to understand that, you need to go back several months to the spring and April timeframe when the Russians experienced their first real major setback of the war, where they sought to topple the government in Kiev in a matter of days.

And it was a dramatic failure.

If you remember, we saw that long convoy of Russian trucks coming in from the north and just being like, they're off. Exactly. They're stuck. And the Russians totally underestimated the Ukrainians.

They took heavy casualties. And they ultimately had to retreat in humiliating fashion with their tail between their legs.

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