Ukraine: Russia says it has stopped taking people into the army for compulsory military service. This is the first time since World War II that such a large number of people have been mobilized to the war front. Russian officials say hundreds of thousands of people have been drafted into the army and a quarter of them have been sent to war.

Many men fled the country when conscription was announced. The Russian government has ordered heavy punishments against those who leave the country.

The United States, meanwhile, announced it would send another $275 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including arms, ammunition and equipment from Pentagon inventories, bringing U.S. military assistance to the country under the Biden administration to more than $18.5 billion.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington was working to provide Ukraine with the air defence capabilities it needs, with two initial sophisticated anti-aircraft NASAMS ready for delivery to the country next month.

He said the United States was also working with allies and partners to enable the delivery of their own air defence systems to Ukraine.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he doubted Moscow was finished calling up soldiers.

In his nightly televised address, he said Russian forces "are so poorly prepared and equipped, so brutally used by their command, that it allows us to presume that very soon Russia may need a new wave of people to send to the war."

"The task set by you of (mobilising) 300,000 people has been completed. No further measures are planned," Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin at a televised meeting in the Kremlin. He said 82,000 had already been sent to the combat zone and the rest were training.

Putin thanked reservists "for their dedication to duty, for their patriotism, for their firm determination to defend our country, to defend Russia, which means their home, their family, our citizens, our people."

More than 2,000 people were arrested in anti-mobilization protests, notably in parts of Russia populated by ethnic minorities who complained they were being disproportionately targeted to be sent to the front.

Putin ordered the call-up when he endorsed plans to annex Ukrainian lands. The West describes those moves as an escalation in response to battlefield setbacks that showed Russia was on course to lose the war.

Kyiv has continued to make gains. Serhiy Gaidai, the Ukrainian governor of Luhansk province, said on Friday that Ukrainian troops had practically gained full control of an important road connecting Svatove and Kreminna, major towns seen as the next big battlefront in the east.

The Ukrainian advance appears to have slowed down in recent days, however, with Kyiv blaming poor weather and tough terrain.
Russia has ordered civilians out of a pocket of land it occupies on the west bank of the Dnipro, which includes Kherson city.