KYIV, Aug 20 (BBC) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed that a team of independent inspectors can travel to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant via Ukraine, the French presidency said on Friday.

The apparent resolution of a dispute over whether inspectors travel to the plant via Ukraine or Russia came as a senior U.S. defense official said Ukraine's forces had brought the Russian advance to a halt.

"You are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield," the official said, speaking to reporters on grounds of anonymity.

According to French President Emmanuel Macron's office, Putin had "reconsidered the demand" that the International Atomic Energy Agency travel through Russia to the site, after the Russian leader himself warned fighting there could bring about a "catastrophe."

It specified that Putin had dropped his demand that the IAEA team travel to the site via Russia, saying it could arrive via Ukraine.

Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Moscow's forces occupying the Zaporizhzhia plant in south Ukraine not to disconnect the facility from the grid and potentially cut supplies to millions of Ukrainians.

A flare-up in fighting around the Russian-controlled nuclear power station — with both sides blaming each other for attacks — has raised the specter of a disaster worse than in Chernobyl.

The Kremlin said in a statement earlier that Putin and Macron agreed that officials from the UN's nuclear watchdog should carry out inspections "as soon as possible" to "assess the real situation on the ground."

Putin also "stressed that the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe," the Kremlin added.

The warning came just a day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres, meeting in the east Ukrainian city of Lviv, sounded the alarm over the intensified fighting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United Nations to secure the site.

The Turkish leader said: "We are worried. We do not want another Chernobyl," referring to the 1986 nuclear disaster, while Guterres cautioned that any damage to the plant would be akin to "suicide."