Ukraine updates: Zelenskyy withdraws threat to sack general

A Russian bomb hit a civil hospital in northeastern Ukraine, injuring four people and prompting an evacuation, the governor of the Kharkiv region said.

Oleh Synehubov, writing on Telegram, said 38 people were evacuated from the facility in the town of Velykyi Burluk, northeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city. The four injured were being treated at the scene.

The hospital's facade, windows and roof were damaged, the governor said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said that Europe, including Germany, must be prepared to shoulder the burden when it came to continued support for Ukraine.

"We will do everything to ensure that the joint contribution from Europe is so huge that Ukraine can build on it and that Putin would not be able to count on our support waning at some point," Scholz told Germany's lower house, the Bundestag, ahead of an EU summit aimed at shoring up military support for Kyiv.

Scholz also admitted that the EU had fallen short on a pledge to supply a million artillery rounds by the end of March and insisted on Wednesday: "It is necessary that we do not ease up on our support for Ukraine."

The chancellor had been criticized for his initial hesitation in arming Ukraine, but Germany has grown to become Kyiv's second-biggest backer after the United States.

However the German leader still refuses to provide long-range Taurus cruise missiles.

Russia's Defense Ministry on Wednesday said 20 missiles fired by Ukraine had been destroyed.

"Air defense on duty destroyed 17 Ukrainian missiles over the Black Sea and another three over the Crimea peninsula," the Russian Defense Ministry said on the Telegram messaging service. 

The ministry added missile debris had fallen near Lyubimovka", a northern suburb of the city of Sevastopol.

The Moscow-installed governor of Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhayev, earlier said debris fell "around Federovskaya Street in a private sector", but added there were no casualties.

Meanwhile the AFP news agency reported that there had been a drone attack on an oil facility deep inside Russian territory, citing a military intelligence source in Kyiv.

The claim comes after the governor of Saint Petersburg said there had been a loud blast at an industrial site on the outskirts of the city.

Earlier this month oil tanks at a storage facility in the town of Klintsy in Russia's Bryansk region, bordering Ukraine, caught fire after the military shot down a Ukrainian attempting to attack targets in the town, according to regional governor Alexander Bogomaz.

The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell on Wednesday said the bloc would fall far short of its target to deliver 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by March.

Borrell was speaking after a meeting of EU defense ministers in Brussels and said that around 52% of the pledged ammunition would be delivered by deadline with the remaining shells expected to be sent by the end of 2024.

"There was some initial inertia, but then once things get set in motion, they can speed up," Borrell said, as he tried to explain why the EU would not meet its determined deadline.

The EU set a target of a million rounds of artillery shells to be sent to Ukraine to help in the fight against invading Russian forces.

"Ukraine needs more support, and that is a message I passed on to member states: You have to do more and quick, because in the frontline, the battle is fierce," Borrell said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has also been calling for allies to do more to help Kyiv, while US President Joe Biden battles to get congressional approval for a spending package for Ukraine. 

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told EU officials that a failure of Congress to act on Ukraine funding would hand a victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We cannot allow Ukraine to run out of money before it runs out of ammunition," Yellen said during a meeting.

Russia and Ukraine announced on Wednesday that they had exchanged hundreds of captive soldiers.

Russia's Defense Ministry said Moscow and Kyiv had exchanged 195 prisoners of war each.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 207 Ukrainians were returned. 

"We remember each Ukrainian in captivity. Both warriors and civilians. We must bring all of them back. We are working on it," he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

It is the first prisoner swap since Russia accused Ukraine of downing a military transport plane in the Belgorod region. Moscow said 65 Ukrainian prisoners were on board, but Kyiv questioned Russia's account.

At least two civilians have been killed by a Ukrainian drone strike in Russian-occupied Donetsk, according to a pro-Moscow official.

"Because of a Ukrainian armed forces drone strike along the route between Gorlivka and Donetsk two civilians died and one person was wounded," said Ivan Prikhodko, the Kremlin-installed mayor of the town of Gorlivka.

Meanwhile, the Russian military claimed to have downed 21 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory and annexed Crimea.

Ukraine has been increasing its attacks on Russian territory in recent months, mainly targeting border regions but also sending drones as far as the capital Moscow and even the northern city of Saint Petersburg, where an oil refinery was reportedly hit on Wednesday.

Kyiv did not confirm Russian reports of this latest attack

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that it was a priority for Ukraine to regain control of its airspace this year in order to make progress on the battlefield.

Three people were killed in overnight Russian drone, missile and artillery strikes, according to Ukrainian authorities on Wednesday morning.

Ukraine's air force said that 20 drones had managed to bypass air defense systems, which managed to shoot down 15 of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

"The enemy directed some of the attack UAVs along front-line territories, trying to hit fuel and energy infrastructure, and civilian and military facilities near the front line and the state border with Russia," the air force said in a statement.

In the eastern Donetsk region, authorities said a Russian S-300 missile had killed a 38-year-old man and wounded a 50-year-old woman. A 47-year-old woman was killed by shelling in the embattled front-line town of Avdiivka, while another man was killed in Kherson.

In response to the latest drone wave, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia had directed some 330 missiles and around 600 UAVs at Ukraine in January alone.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rowed back on a threat to dismiss commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi after the top general refused to resign and potential replacements declined to take on the role, according to media reports in the United Kingdom.

According to British newspaper The Times, quoting high-ranking Ukrainian officers, Zaluzhnyi was summoned to a meeting with Zelenskyy on Monday, where he reportedly told presidential advisers that their assessment of the military situation was more positive than is really the case.

The Guardian newspaper then quoted a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker's understanding that "yesterday the president asked Zaluzhnyi to resign but he declined to do so."

Zelenskyy reportedly threatened to dismiss Zaluzhnyi by presidential decree but was forced to back down after potential successors signaled that they would refuse to assume the post. According to The Times, the United States and the United Kingdom also applied pressure on Zelenskyy not to dismiss Zaluzhnyi, as did senior Ukrainian military officials.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense denied the reports and has played down suggestions of a rift between the president and his commander-in-chief, posting on Telegram on Monday: "Dear journalists, we immediately answer everyone: No, this is not true."

General Zaluzhnyi, 50, was appointed commander-in-chief just a few months before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Having overseen the successful defense of Kyiv in the opening weeks and the recapture of some occupied territory in northern and southern Ukraine, Zaluzhnyi is a popular figure who has been rumored to have political ambitions — which he denies.

But relations between Zaluzhnyi and Zelenskyy have been considered strained since the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counter-offensive.

"There are not fundamental issues between them but Zelenskyy's office has been concerned that Zaluzhnyi has been making political not military statements," opposition politician Oleksii Goncharenko told The Guardian, blaming personality clashes and opining that dismissing Zaluzhnyi would be "a bad idea."