Ukraine's military recorded 181 combat engagements in the 24 hours ending Friday morning — one of the higher daily tallies of 2026 — as Russian forces pushed across multiple front sectors and launched a massive drone strike on Odesa that experts say previews the tempo of the spring-summer offensive now believed to be days away.
The Odesa attack was notable for its scale: more than 60 Russian combat drones struck the port city and surrounding region overnight, hitting the port area, a thermal power station, and residential infrastructure. Power outages cascaded across southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force said it intercepted the majority of drones but acknowledged multiple impacts. Mayor Hennadii Trukhanov reported casualties were being assessed and called the strike "one of the largest single drone waves against civilian infrastructure" since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Simultaneously, Kryvyi Rih was struck Friday morning, with a Russian missile hitting an industrial facility in the industrial city that has been targeted repeatedly in recent weeks. Ukrainian authorities ordered emergency shutdowns at nearby facilities as a precaution. From March 21 through 27, Ukraine documented one massive and five group Russian strikes against civilian energy facilities — a pattern analysts at the Kyiv School of Economics describe as a deliberate infrastructure attrition campaign designed to weaken industrial output and civilian morale ahead of a ground push.
