Ukraine fired 9,360 kamikaze drones at Russian positions in a single 24-hour period ending 19 April 2026 — alongside 68 airstrikes and more than 3,400 artillery barrages — yet the front line barely moved. Russia's losses in that same window reached 1,070 personnel, the highest single-day toll since January 2026, per Ukraine's Ministry of Defence. The paradox of mass attrition at near-zero territorial gain is beginning to reshape how both sides calculate the war's end.
The most concrete Ukrainian action of the 24-hour period came from the air. Ukrainian forces struck the Tuapse oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar Krai early on 20 April 2026, setting fires that emergency responders took more than four hours to extinguish, according to Ukrainian military spokesman Andrii Kovtun. Tuapse is one of Russia's largest southern oil-processing facilities, capable of refining roughly 12 million tonnes of crude per year, per the Russian Energy Ministry's 2024 infrastructure report. The strike was the latest in a sustained campaign: Ukraine had already hit the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran refineries in Samara Oblast, the Tikhoretsk terminal in Krasnodar, and oil export infrastructure at the Baltic port of Vysotsk over the prior two days.
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