Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR, announced on Saturday that it had successfully struck two large Russian landing ships and a radar station in Sevastopol Bay, the main naval base in Russian-occupied Crimea — the peninsula on the northern Black Sea that Russia annexed in 2014. The agency said the two vessels, each valued at roughly $75 million, were hit and that radar equipment was destroyed in the operation.
The same night, Ukrainian drones also struck the port and oil refinery of Tuapse, a strategically important city on Russia's Black Sea coast in the Krasnodar region. At least one person was killed and another injured in the attack. Tuapse's port serves as a major Russian export hub for crude oil, fertilisers, coal and diesel, while its refinery — one of Russia's ten largest — produces high-grade petroleum products including Euro-5 diesel, fuel oil and kerosene. It was the second Ukrainian drone strike on Tuapse in the space of days; Russian authorities had only just reported extinguishing a fire from the previous attack when the new strike hit. Two oil storage tanks at the refinery were reportedly damaged, and debris struck several buildings in the city, including a kindergarten, a primary school, a church and a residential complex. Schools in Tuapse remained closed the following day.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its air defences intercepted 112 Ukrainian drones overnight, but images circulating on social media showed extensive fires and damage in Tuapse. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that intensified drone campaigns against Russian oil infrastructure cost Moscow at least $2.3 billion in oil revenues in March alone, with Ukrainian forces reportedly hitting 76 industrial targets that month, including fifteen refineries.
The strikes were accompanied by renewed Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory. Overnight assaults hit the regions of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Sumy and Zaporizhia. In the border region of Sumy, a drone struck a car in Putyvl, injuring three women. Two homes were damaged in the Brovary district near Kyiv, injuring one resident. Russian strikes also damaged railway infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city in the northeast. Over the preceding 24 hours, attacks in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions — both partially occupied by Russia in the country's south and east — killed one person and injured eleven.
The overnight exchanges underscore how entrenched the conflict has become more than four years after Russia's full-scale invasion. Peace negotiations brokered by the United States have so far failed to produce a ceasefire agreement, with talks further complicated by the outbreak of a US-Israeli military confrontation with Iran. Core territorial disagreements remain: Ukraine has proposed freezing the front lines in their current positions, while Russia insists on full control of the Donetsk region, large parts of which remain under Ukrainian control — a demand Kyiv rejects outright. The United Nations estimates that more than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in Russian strikes since the start of the full-scale invasion.