A judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from placing 2,200 workers at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave, hours before it was due to happen. Judge Carl Nichols issued a "limited" temporary restraining order, in response to a last-minute lawsuit filed by two unions trying to save the agency.

The judge temporarily barred USAID from putting 2,200 workers on paid leave after employee groups filed a lawsuit challenging the administration’s authority to shut down the agency.

This decision follows a lawsuit filed by the largest U.S. government workers' union and an association of foreign service workers.

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Friday that its forces had taken control of the strategic coal-mining city of Toretsk in eastern Ukraine, but Ukraine's military denied the city had been captured and reported heavy fighting in and around it.

Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a 2019 Trump appointee, said after a hearing that he would issue a temporary restraining order pausing the imminent administrative leave of 2,200 U.S.A.I.D. employees and a plan to withdraw nearly all of the agency’s overseas workers within 30 days.