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.

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.

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.

The judge stressed his order was not a decision on the employees' request to roll back the administration’s swiftly moving destruction of the agency.

But for now, it appeared that the more than 2,000 direct hires at the agency who are part of the unions would be safe, according to Lauren Bateman an attorney at Public Citizen, an advocacy group that filed the lawsuit. About 500 USAID staff have already been placed on leave by the Trump administration.

A federal judge on Friday said he will pause a midnight deadline for the U.S. Agency for International Development to be stripped down to a few hundred workers from a workforce of more than 5,000.