For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit .
The Ukrainian military says its forces have shot down more than 20 Russian drones over the last 24 hours, The Associated Press reported.
Most of the drones were the Iranian-made Shahed-136 that are packed with explosives and are designed to crash into targets.
The military also said that 500 former criminals have been mobilized to reinforce Russian ranks in the eastern Donetsk region, where Ukrainian forces have been retaking territory. The new units are commanded by officers drawn from law enforcement.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War says Russia has increasingly deployed the cheaper an less sophisticated Iranian-made drones in recent weeks, but the weapons are unlikely to significantly affect the course of the war.
Britain's Defense Ministry says Ukraine's ability to capture and put back into service Russian tanks and other equipment continues to be an important factor in its drive to repel the invasion, The Associated Press reported.
The ministry said Friday that Ukrainian forces have captured at least 440 tanks and about 650 armored vehicles since the start of the war.
It also said the failure of Russian crews to destroy intact equipment before withdrawing or surrendering “highlights their poor state of training and low levels of battle discipline.”
Dutch authorities have arrested a man on suspicion of selling microchips to Russia in breach of sanctions imposed by the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, officials said on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
The microchips, sold to companies and other bodies in Russia, could be used for military purposes, the Dutch financial and fiscal crime investigation service (FIOD) said.
The 55-year-old suspect has dual Dutch and Russian nationality, a FIOD spokeswoman told AFP.
He was arrested in the east of the Netherlands on September 27 following a report from a bank to financial investigators.
Spain's energy minister said European leaders meeting in Prague on Friday were nearing consensus on a EU gas pricing system that would create an alternative to the current benchmark and effectively cap prices.
Heads of state from across Europe met in Prague to discuss how to combat soaring energy prices caused by the Ukraine war. The European Union hopes to reach an agreement on electricity market reform within two weeks to ease the impact of gas prices in power generation systems.
Spain's Energy Minister Teresa Ribera told Reuters in an interview the leaders were moving toward a consensus on an alternative benchmark price to the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) gas price that could effectively smooth over differences.
The new benchmark will be "a basket of indicators that allows us (EU) to have something that adapts in a flexible way. It is not an absolute fixed price," said Ribera, adding the system would substitute the cap proposal.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday called on Brussels to ramp up pressure on Russia's energy sector, a day after the EU imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported.
"We must continue moving in this direction, the direction of pressure on the Russian energy sector, on this main source of income of the aggressor state," Zelenskyy said in a video address to an EU summit in Prague.
He thanked the EU for the adoption of new sanctions on Moscow, which expanded import/export bans and blacklisted individuals over Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
Zelenskyy also reiterated Kyiv's calls to "demilitarize" Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in territory Moscow claimed to have annexed.
A Ukrainian official said the bodies of 530 people have been discovered in recaptured areas of Kharkiv region since September 7, The Associated Press reported.
Ukraine's First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevhen Yenin said Friday the bodies included those 225 women, 257 men and 19 children, while 29 bodies haven't been identified.
Overall, 1,350 civilians were killed in the Kharkiv region since the start of the war. Serhiy Bolvinov head of the Kharkiv region's State Police Investigative Department, said 22 torture sites were found in recently liberated areas.
The Russian rights group Memorial is honored to have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but it said the prize should have gone to political prisoners such as Alexey Navalny, who risk their lives for contesting President Vladimir Putin, the group's co-founder said Friday, according to Agence France-Presse.