Ukraine war situation update | 28 March – 3 April 2026

Country: Ukraine Source: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Please refer to the attached file. Key events 28 Mar. Odesa — More than 60 Russian drones kill three civilians and injure 14 in Odesa city and port 1 Apr. Cherkasy — Four civilians die after approaching a crashed Russian drone in the Zolotoniskyi district when it exploded 2 Apr. Bashkortostan, Russia — A Ukrainian drone strike damages an oil refinery in Ufa, 2, 000 km away from Ukraine Key trends Russian forces occupied a village northeast of Sumy in the Sumy region and another near Vovchansk in the Kharkiv region. They also claimed control over two settlements near Orikhiv and Ternuvate in the Zaporizhia region and advanced near Kostiantynivka and Lyman in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian forces reclaimed a settlement in the Dnipropetrovsk region in its counter-offensive near the administrative boundary with the Zaporizhia region. Russian forces launched at least 57 long-range missile and drone attacks, including on the western regions of Lviv, Zakarpattia, Volyn, Ternopil, and Chernivtsi. Russian strikes killed at least 58 civilians in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Odesa, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Mykolaiv, and Kyiv regions. Ukrainian drone strikes reportedly killed four civilians in the Russian-controlled parts of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Spotlight: Russia prepares to capture Kramatorsk and Slovyansk with unprecedented civilian bombing As they gradually surround and occupy the town of Kostiantynivka, Russian forces now eye the capture of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, the two fortress cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donetsk region. Russian forces are preparing the battleground for the seizure of the urban agglomeration headed by these two cities, not only through the prioritization of additional troop deployments, 1 but also by bombing and targeting civilian infrastructure and remaining civilians almost daily. On 3 April, Russian forces launched at least five aerial bombs at the city of Kramatorsk, killing six civilians and injuring eight others, while damaging residential buildings, educational and energy infrastructure, and an ambulance near a civilian evacuation point. Earlier in the week, on 30 March, Russian aerial bombs also damaged a maternity hospital and injured at least four civilians in Slovyansk. These events underline the evergrowing threat not just to Ukrainian military logistics in the Kramatorskyi district of the Donetsk region, but also to the humanitarian hubs and civilians living in or evacuated from front line locations. In Slovyansk, the regional authorities recently began mandatory evacuations of children and their guardians from the most exposed streets of the city, 2 whereas authorities in Kramatorsk began the process back in October 2025. 3 In comparison to the first three months of 2025, Russian targeting of civilians in the Kramatorskyi district increased almost threefold in the number of events and fatalities in 2026, as the front line was pushed closer to the Slovyansk-Kramatorsk-Kostiantynivka agglomeration. The impact on civilians was compounded by Russia’s indiscriminate and extensive use of modernized guided aerial bombs and first-person-view drones against both military and civilian targets. Following their strategy of total destruction in front line regions to strong-arm Ukraine into ceding the Donbas region, Russian forces are seemingly doubling down on capturing territories devoid of populations and infrastructure at any cost to capture the Donetsk region by the end of 2026.

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