# OPEN LETTER: To the Russian Black Sea Fleet — the Neptune found you, even in the bay

> I am writing to you from a distance, but not from indifference. In the night of June 11, 2026, Ukrainian naval forces

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Open letter
- Published: 2026-07-01
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-a-la-flotte-russe-de-la-mer-noire-le-neptune-vous-a-trouves-meme-

## Introduction: a letter addressed to those who believed they were safe

### The night of June 11 and what it means

I am writing to you from a distance, but not from indifference. In the night of **June 11, 2026**, Ukrainian naval forces launched a **Neptune** missile from their coastal defense system against the military installations of the **Russian Black Sea Fleet** in **Striletska Bay** in occupied **Sevastopol**. Weapons storage facilities and military equipment depots were destroyed. There it is. A clean sentence for a real destruction.

You may have believed that **Crimea** was an impregnable citadel. That the depots buried in the bay, protected by air defense systems and distance, would be beyond the reach of Ukrainian strikes. **Sevastopol**, the imperial city, the historic home of your fleet for two centuries. The symbol of your maritime dominance over the **Black Sea**. The Neptune found the way. It always has.

### Why this letter now

I am not writing to celebrate destruction. I am not writing to glorify war. I am writing because this strike — reported on **July 1, 2026** by **Defence Express** with reference to the events of **June 11** — is the perfect metaphor for something I want to name clearly: the aggressor's safe space is shrinking. Every month that passes, every documented strike, every destroyed depot signals that Ukraine is progressively imposing an intolerable strategic cost on your military presence in **Crimea**. And that deserves to be said, loudly and clearly.

This letter is addressed to the Russian military command that still believes the Black Sea is its private lake. It is also addressed to Western leaders who still hesitate to fully support Ukrainian strike capabilities. And it is addressed to those who, in Ukraine, build missiles in discreet workshops, under drones and bombs — with, deep in their hands, the conviction that their work matters.

*I am aware of the privilege of being able to write an open letter from a country at peace. Those who designed, built, and launched this Neptune do not have that luxury. They work under permanent threat. Their silent courage deserves more than a footnote in our strategic analyses. I owe them at least the act of naming what they do.*

## What the Neptune is: a weapon born of refusal

### The story of a missile built by necessity

The **Neptune** missile was not born out of an arms export tradition or a Cold War defense industry inheritance. It was born from Ukraine's refusal to remain unarmed against Russian naval power in the **Black Sea**. After the annexation of **Crimea** in **2014**, which stripped Ukraine of most of its navy, engineers at the **Luch Design Bureau** accelerated the development of a coastal anti-ship missile capable of protecting Ukrainian shores from land.

The **Neptune** entered service in **2020**. Initial range: **280 km**. Warhead: **150 kg**. Speed: subsonic, **900 km/h**. Launcher: mobile, ground-based. Estimated development cost: around **40 million dollars**. Modest in appearance. Decisive in reality. Because two years after entering service, this missile sank the **Moskva**, the flagship cruiser of the **Black Sea Fleet**, valued at **750 million dollars**. The ratio is instructive.

### The evolution into a versatile weapon

Since the **sinking of the Moskva in April 2022**, Ukrainian engineers have not stopped improving the **Neptune**. Its range was extended beyond **400 km**, then according to some sources beyond **1,000 km** in long-range variants. The guidance system was adapted for land targets, overland trajectories, and strikes on energy infrastructure. In **May 2026**, a Neptune put two distillation units out of service at the **Novoshakhtinsk** refinery in Russia. In **June 2026**, **MBDA** — the maker of the Storm Shadow — signed a memorandum with the **Luch Bureau** to jointly develop a new-generation **Neptune 2**.

Ukraine has not merely survived the war. It has transformed constraint into innovation. A country once said to lack a sufficient defense industry now produces missiles that Europe's largest missile manufacturer wants to co-develop. That is the story this strike on **Striletska Bay** carries within it.

*MBDA co-developing a Neptune 2 with the Luch Bureau. That sentence deserves a pause. This is Europe's defense being built from the rubble of a war, with the hard-won expertise of those who fought for their survival. If Ukraine had been abandoned in 2022, none of these partnerships would exist. Ukrainian resistance is also a Western technological investment.*

## Striletska Bay: what this name says about the geography of war

### Sevastopol as the nerve center of Russian presence in Crimea

**Sevastopol** is not simply a city. It is the reason **Putin** annexed **Crimea** in **2014**: the seat of the **Black Sea Fleet**, leased from Ukraine since the dissolution of the USSR, which the Kremlin never accepted losing. That geopolitical obsession with a naval base triggered a chain of events that led to the most destructive war in Europe since **1945**. This is where the cost of an unresolved imperial complex becomes measurable.

**Striletska Bay** in particular houses patrol boats, support vessels, and a fleet logistics coordination center. According to analyses by **Crimean Wind** and **Militarnyi**, it is a key operational structure for the maintenance and supply of the ships that launch **Kalibr** missiles against Ukrainian cities. Destroying the weapons and equipment depots in this bay directly reduces Russia's strike capability against Ukrainian civilian populations.

### The systematic campaign to degrade the Russian fleet

The strike of **June 11, 2026** is part of a methodical and extraordinarily effective campaign. Since **2022**, Ukraine has destroyed or damaged approximately **33% of the Black Sea Fleet's combat vessels** — some twenty warships. In **January 2026**, Ukrainian Navy spokesperson **Dmytro Pletenchuk** confirmed that no Russian ship or submarine had been observed in the Black Sea maritime zone for more than a week. The fleet had taken refuge in **Novorossiysk**, **600 km** from the front. Even there, it is not safe.

In **December 2025**, Ukrainian **Sub Sea Baby** underwater drones had struck a Kilo-class submarine in **Novorossiysk**, penetrating multi-layered port defenses in what one analysis described as a feat deemed "impossible." Ukraine is forcing military experts worldwide to revise their analytical frameworks. This is not luck — it is competence.

*When people say Ukraine is "holding," they miss the essential point. Ukraine is not in passive survival mode — it is in progressive reconquest mode. Every fleet strike, every burned refinery, every destroyed depot says the same thing: we are turning your announced victory into a documented disaster. The Black Sea is no longer your lake. It has become a contested space again.*

## To those who signed the orders from Moscow

### The decision architecture behind every missile

I address myself here directly to the Russian military decision-makers who authorized the deployment of weapons and equipment in those **Striletska** depots. You knew that **Crimea** was a target. You knew that Ukraine had the capability to strike. And yet you continued. You continued because you had no choice — these depots are essential to maintaining the operational capability of your fleet. Every time a depot is destroyed, you must rebuild it, restock it, protect it more heavily.

This vicious cycle — build, protect, rebuild — is exactly what Ukrainian strategy seeks to create. Not total destruction, but systemic exhaustion. Every resource devoted to defending **Crimea** is a resource subtracted from the front. Every air defense system deployed to protect **Sevastopol** is a system that does not protect troops at **Pokrovsk** or **Sloviansk**.

### The logic of attrition and its human consequences

I do not celebrate death. No human being, even an enemy, is a figure in a column of losses. But I name what this war is objectively producing: a **Russian state** that sends its young men to die by the thousands, every day, for an imperial project that the majority of the international community condemns. According to Ukrainian data from **June 30, 2026**, Russian losses since the start of the war exceed **380,000 soldiers** killed or put out of action.

These men are not only enemies. They are also victims of a regime that decided to sacrifice a generation for a dream of empire. The best thing the West can do for these Russian soldiers unaware of the true cost of their mission — is to help Ukraine win this war quickly. The longer it lasts, the heavier the toll on both sides.

*I resist the temptation to dehumanize the enemy. It is easy, comfortable, and strategically foolish. Understanding why Russian soldiers continue to fight despite catastrophic losses — indoctrination, fear, propaganda, despair — is a precondition for imagining a way out of the war. Blind hatred is not a policy. It is an emotion that delays peace.*

## To Ukraine, its engineers, its soldiers

### The industrial miracle under the bombs

To those who build **Neptune** missiles in workshops I cannot name, in cities I cannot reveal, under the threat of strikes deliberately targeting Ukrainian industrial infrastructure: your work destroyed the flagship of an imperial fleet. Your work set fire to Russian refineries hundreds of kilometers away. Your work is transforming the military balance of the **Black Sea** against the aggressor.

Ukraine was producing **70% of its newly authorized weapons** domestically a year ago. Today that figure is **90%**, according to data from **Euromaidan Press**. More than **400 Ukrainian combat units** have placed orders for more than **500,000 drones and pieces of equipment** through the **Brave1 Market** platform. This is not a war economy surviving — it is a war economy accelerating.

### What the Striletska strike represents for the Ukrainian navy

The **Ukrainian navy** had been virtually destroyed or captured at the start of the war. It rebuilt itself around new doctrines: naval drones, coastal missiles, precision strikes. In **April 2026**, a **SBU** special forces operation struck three Russian fleet vessels in **Sevastopol**, including landing ships. In **June 2026**, the **Neptune** strike on **Striletska Bay** continues this campaign of systematic degradation.

The Ukrainian navy has rewritten the naval warfare manuals. It demonstrated that a navy without a surface fleet — without large warships — could dominate a maritime space against a technologically superior adversary, by combining drones, missiles, and intelligence. This lesson is being studied in **Washington**, **Taipei**, **Tokyo**, and in every general staff reflecting on asymmetric naval warfare.

*There is a cruel irony in the fact that Ukraine, stripped of its navy by Russia in 2014, developed asymmetric naval capabilities that are now a global reference. The theft of the Ukrainian fleet in Crimea created the void that forced innovation. Putin could confiscate the ships — he could not confiscate the intelligence of their engineers.*

## To the West that still hesitates

### The cost of half-measures

This letter also addresses Western leaders who continue to deliver weapons to Ukraine with restrictions on their use, with timelines that defy common sense, and with political ambivalence that costs Ukrainian lives. Every restriction on deep strikes, every hesitation over long-range systems, every condition placed on the use of delivered weapons — all of it has a name: passive complicity with the aggressor through short-term political calculation.

The strike on **Striletska Bay** was possible because the **Neptune** is a Ukrainian weapon whose use Ukraine decides. Imagine what would be possible with full freedom of action for the longer-range systems provided by the West. Ukraine is not asking the West to fight in its place. It is asking the West to stop hampering its ability to defend itself with the full effectiveness it is capable of.

### The Penza precedent: striking the Russian military-industrial complex

In the night of **June 30 to July 1, 2026**, Ukrainian forces struck the Physical Metrology Scientific Research Institute in the city of **Penza** — a facility described by the Ukrainian General Staff as **"a leading Russian company in the space, aeronautical, and military engineering sector."** This establishment manufactured sensors for **Iskander**, **Kalibr**, and **Kh-101** missiles, as well as components for **Su-34**, **Su-35**, and **Tu-95MS** military aircraft. Striking the production chain of the missiles that strike Ukrainian cities — that is the definition of a legitimate and effective military strategy.

This strike illustrates the transformation of Ukrainian strategy: no longer merely defending territory, but reaching the adversary's industrial capabilities. With Ukrainian weapons, from Ukrainian territory, without the West having to assume political responsibility for the decision. The only thing the West should do: not place obstacles in that path.

*The Western paradox strikes me every time I analyze it. We deliver weapons to Ukraine so it can defend its sovereignty — and then we tell it how it can use them. That is simultaneously generous and condescending. Ukraine deserves its allies. It also deserves their full and complete trust in its military decisions.*

## The Black Sea freed: a global economic victory

### Grain, maritime routes, and food security

The degradation of the **Russian Black Sea Fleet** has a direct and global economic consequence: the progressive reopening of maritime routes for Ukrainian grain exports. Ukraine is one of the world's breadbaskets — the third-largest wheat exporter in the world before the war. Russia's militarization of the **Black Sea** had threatened these exports, with consequences for global food prices and the food security of dozens of net-importing countries.

Every Russian ship destroyed, every **Sevastopol** logistics depot put out of service, every air defense system in **Crimea** neutralized — all of this contributes to securing a maritime space through which Ukrainian grain must pass to feed part of the planet. Ukraine's naval victory is not only geopolitical. It is humanitarian.

### The impact on Russian expansion ambitions

The Black Sea was the laboratory of Russia's territorial expansion project to the south. Controlling the sea meant controlling access to the **Mediterranean**, to **Turkey**, to global trade routes. That project is now in disarray. The **Black Sea Fleet** is hiding in **Novorossiysk**. It is being struck even there. Its operational activity has dropped drastically. The **eight or nine vessels** capable of launching **Kalibr** missiles — each now represents an existential risk for the fleet if lost.

This strategic fragility is the direct result of Ukrainian resistance. It changes Russian calculations not only in the Black Sea, but across the entire Mediterranean theater and beyond. A great power losing control of its immediate maritime sphere is a great power whose imperial project is in retreat.

*Ukrainian grain crossing the Black Sea feeds families in North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia. Those families often do not know that their daily bread depends in part on Neptune missiles keeping the maritime route open. The connections between a strike in Striletska Bay and a meal in Cairo are real. Ukraine's war is not only Ukrainian.*

## Crimea as the final objective: from strike to liberation

### The diplomacy of destruction

Every strike on **Crimea** is not only military — it is diplomatic. It reminds **Moscow** that the occupied peninsula is not a permanent acquisition. It reminds the international community that Ukraine has not renounced its sovereignty over this illegally annexed territory. It reminds potential negotiators that any peace agreement that does not include the return of **Crimea** will leave in place a Russian military platform within missile range of the Ukrainian coast.

Ukrainian **Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov** stated in **June 2026** that Ukrainian drones were **"turning Crimea into an island"** by disrupting its land links, its bridges, and its logistical supply chains. This strategy of progressively isolating the peninsula is the expression of a clear vision: make maintaining the occupation so costly that the Russian calculation becomes unsustainable.

### The Neptune as a tool of symbolic reconquest

There is something deeply symbolic in the fact that the **Neptune** — born from Ukraine's refusal to accept the loss of its navy after **2014** — is now the instrument of maritime reconquest. This missile, named after the Roman god of the sea, strikes the naval foundations of Russian occupation from the Ukrainian coast. It is a military poetry that the engineers of the **Luch Bureau** had likely not anticipated, but which their perseverance made possible.

The **Striletska Bay** strike is not the last. There will be others. The **Neptune 2**, co-developed with **MBDA**, will be more powerful, more precise, with a longer range. The Black Sea will not be recovered in a day. But it is being recovered. One depot at a time. One ship at a time. One Russian military decision made impossible at a time.

*I often think of the Ukrainian sailors captured or killed during the 2014 annexation, of those who had to watch their ships taken without being able to resist. Of those who had the affront of surrendering to the Russians to avoid dying. The Neptune will not bring them back. But it says something in their name: you have not been forgotten, and this is not over.*

## To Putin, directly

### What your calculations have produced

I address myself to **Vladimir Putin** directly. Not out of naivety — he will not read this. But because naming responsibilities is an act in itself. You annexed **Crimea** in **2014** to secure your access to the **Black Sea** and assert the continuity of the Russian empire. Twelve years later, your **Black Sea Fleet** hides in **Novorossiysk**, its depots in **Sevastopol** burn, its landing ships are destroyed, and the Ukrainian missile that sank the **Moskva** is now being co-developed with Europe's largest missile manufacturer to become even more powerful.

You wanted to weaken Ukraine. You created one of the most innovative and resilient military forces in the world. You wanted to divide the West. You triggered the largest transatlantic unity movement since the Cold War. You wanted to secure **Sevastopol** forever. You turned **Striletska Bay** into a permanent target of the navy of a country you had expected to conquer in three days.

### The fundamental miscalculation

The error of your project, **Mr. Putin**, is that of all empires that underestimated the resistance of peoples who refuse to be annexed. You believed Ukrainian identity was an artificial construction — **"one people"** as you wrote. You triggered the most definitive war for the construction of a distinct and proud Ukrainian national identity. Every missile launched on **Kyiv** created ten new Ukrainian patriots. Every soldier sent to die in the fields of the **Donbas** forged ten new legitimate hatreds against the occupation.

The strike on **Striletska Bay** says it in its own way: Russia can occupy, but it cannot secure. It can take, but it cannot keep without a growing and intolerable cost. The history of empires is the history of that truth. You are not an exception.

*I feel no hatred for Vladimir Putin. I feel something colder and harder: a certainty. The certainty that his project has already failed in its most fundamental premises. Ukraine exists. It resists. It strikes. It innovates. And one day, whoever governs Russia after him will have to manage the ruins of this failed imperial project.*

## What this strike says about the future of the war

### The dynamic of Ukrainian military innovation

The strike on **Striletska Bay** is part of a Ukrainian military innovation trajectory that shows no signs of slowing. Ukraine now produces **90% of its newly authorized weapons** domestically. It is co-developing systems with European partners like **MBDA**. It has launched long-range drone production in the **Netherlands** under the **Build with Ukraine** program. It received **3.9 billion euros** from the **EU** for its weapons production — the first tranche of a **6 billion** program. This industrial dynamic is a strategic data point that **Moscow** cannot ignore.

Deep strikes on Russian military industries — like the one on the **Penza** Institute — complement the naval degradation strategy in **Crimea**. Ukraine is simultaneously attacking Russian military capabilities at sea, on land, in the air, and in the industrial depths of Russian territory. It is a total war strategy conducted by a country that, four years ago, could not have imagined being capable of it.

### The significance for the global order

What Ukraine has demonstrated since **2022** — and what the Neptune strike on **Striletska Bay** illustrates — is that revisionist powers are not invincible. That technology, motivation, and international support can compensate for inferiority in raw numbers and resources. That resistance is possible. This lesson counts not only for Ukraine, but for **Taiwan**, for the Baltic states, for all countries living in the shadow of a neighbor with imperial ambitions.

**China** is watching carefully what Ukraine is doing to **Russia**. Military theorists in **Beijing** are studying Ukrainian drones, Neptune missiles, refinery strikes, asymmetric naval operations. These lessons will find their way into their doctrines. For better or worse — depending on who applies them.

*Taiwan, which may be reading this, is studying this conflict with existential attention. What Ukraine has developed — asymmetric defense, drones, coastal missiles — is exactly the type of capability Taiwan would need if Beijing decided to act. The war in Ukraine is not a local European event. It is a laboratory of modern warfare whose lessons will have planetary reach.*

## What we owe to the Ukrainians who build these missiles

### The invisible work of industrial resistance

I want to end with those who are spoken of least. The technicians at the **Luch Bureau** who spent years designing, testing, improving the **Neptune**. The factory workers who built these missiles under the permanent threat of Russian strikes. The navy soldiers who targeted **Striletska Bay** with a precision that speaks to a training, an operational intelligence, and a courage that words can barely approach.

We owe them several things. First, the truth: saying what they accomplished without softening or concealing it. Then, support: continuing to fund, arm, and accompany Ukraine until justice is possible. And finally, memory: not forgetting, when this war is over, the human and intellectual cost of this extraordinary resistance.

### The open letter that needs no reply

This letter calls for no reply from the Russian fleet or the Kremlin. It expects none. It exists to name what is happening — with the clarity that reality deserves and that official rhetoric does not always provide. In **Striletska Bay**, on **June 11, 2026**, a Ukrainian missile hit its target. The aggressor's weapons depots burned. And somewhere, in a workshop I cannot name, Ukrainian engineers knew that their work, once again, had mattered.

That is enough. It is even a great deal. Military justice does not ask for more than that to keep holding on.

*I do not know when this war will end. I do not know how it will end. Nobody truly does. What I know is that men and women wake up every morning in Ukraine to design, build, and launch missiles that defend their freedom. And that the West, which created the international order this war threatens, does not have the right to let them down.*

## The lessons the world draws from Ukrainian naval strategy

### Taiwan, Japan, and maritime asymmetry

The Ukrainian naval campaign is being studied in general staffs worldwide. **Taiwan**, which faces a threat of amphibious invasion from **China**, is watching how Ukraine neutralized the landing capability of the **Black Sea Fleet** with drones and coastal missiles. **Japan** has sent personnel to **NATO** command in **Wiesbaden** and is developing collaboration with Ukrainian drone companies. The Ukrainian model of asymmetric naval warfare — a navy without surface vessels that neutralizes a conventional fleet — is redefining military doctrines across half the planet.

What the **Luch Bureau** built in Ukrainian workshops is becoming the reference for any power that must defend its shores against a numerically superior naval adversary. It is an involuntary contribution to global security that Ukraine is making at the cost of its own blood. Every **Neptune** missile that strikes its target in **Striletska Bay** is also a message to **Taipei**, **Tokyo**, and **Seoul**: asymmetric resistance is possible, it works, and it deserves to be prepared before it is too late.

### The revisionist axis Russia-China-Iran-North Korea

The naval campaign in the **Black Sea** cannot be analyzed in isolation from the global threat. The Iranian **Shahed** drones that **Russia** launches by the thousands at Ukraine are a direct contribution to the Russian war effort. Chinese electronic components in Russian drones represent documented economic complicity. **North Korea** sent soldiers to fight for **Moscow**. These connections form a revisionist axis that simultaneously tests the solidity of the Western order on multiple fronts.

Ukraine is holding this forward front for the entire West. Every **Neptune** strike on **Sevastopol**'s depots says something to strategists in **Beijing**, **Tehran**, and **Pyongyang**: organized, well-equipped resistance backed by the West can impose an intolerable cost on the aggressor. That message is precious. It deserves to be maintained at the price of continued support for **Kyiv**.

*China is watching. Iran is watching. North Korea is watching. They see Russia — their strategic partner — bogged down, losing its ships, watching its depots burn. If Ukraine wins, the message is clear for all revisionists: aggression carries a price that resistance can make unbearable. If Ukraine loses, the message is equally clear — in the other direction. The outcome of this war is drawing the geopolitics of the rest of the century.*

## Conclusion: the letter that history continues to write

### What the Black Sea will say about this era

In ten, twenty years, when historians write about this period, they will note the extraordinary transformation Ukraine accomplished in the naval domain. They will note that the **Black Sea Fleet**, symbol of Russian imperial power, was progressively neutralized not by a great navy, but by a combination of drones, urgently developed missiles, and an indestructible national will. They will note the **Striletska Bay** strike as an episode in a campaign that redefined naval warfare for the twenty-first century.

And they will note, I hope, that the West ultimately understood what was at stake — not quickly enough, not strongly enough, but enough for Ukraine to survive and resist. That shared resilience will be the foundation of any security order worthy of the name in the decades ahead. The letter I write today is also a letter to that future.

### What I want this article to do

I want this article to do one simple thing: make visible what military reports render invisible — the human and political meaning of every strike, every missile, every destroyed depot. I am not in the field. I do not claim the authority of one who has seen. But I claim the authority of one who reads with rigor, who thinks with honesty, and who refuses to treat the Ukrainian war as a geopolitical news item. It is an existential struggle for a people. And it deserves to be written at the level of what it is.

*This letter is not one from a military expert or a career geopolitician. It is from an observer who refuses the anesthesia of numbers and victory bulletins. Striletska Bay is burning. People made that possible at the cost of real risks. The least we can do is speak about it clearly.*

## The series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian industrial installations

### From Striletska to Penza: a coherent strategy

The **Striletska Bay** strike is part of a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian military-industrial installations that has evolved considerably since **2022**. In the same night of **June 30 to July 1, 2026**, Ukrainian forces simultaneously struck the Physical Metrology Institute in **Penza** — a manufacturer of sensors for Russian ballistic and cruise missiles — and logistics depots in **Kursk**, **Donetsk**, and **Kharkiv**, as well as drone control stations and strategic bridges in the **Donbas**. This synchronization indicates sophisticated operational planning.

With each night of strikes, Ukraine simultaneously targets several levels of the Russian war machine: front-line equipment, rear logistics infrastructure, and now deep industrial production capabilities on Russian territory. It is a war on three levels conducted simultaneously — an operational sophistication that few armies in the world are capable of sustaining.

### Destroyed bridges and the isolation of Crimea

During the same period, Ukrainian forces struck a road bridge on the **Malyi Kalchyk** river near **Hranitne** in **Donetsk** oblast, a rail bridge on the **Tepla** river in **Luhansk** oblast, and a logistics hub near **Novoocheretuvate** in **Donetsk** oblast. These destructions of transport infrastructure reduce Russian capabilities to rotate troops, resupply munitions, and transfer equipment — joining the Crimea isolation strategy that Fedorov explicitly named.

The strategic coherence of all these strikes is not accidental. It reflects a clear Ukrainian doctrine: starve the adversary before striking it frontally. Cut the nerves before reaching the brain. Isolate before encircling. It is intelligent attrition warfare — and it is producing tangible results on the Russian advance rate, which fell from **16.65 km² per day in August 2025** to just **3.79 km² per day in June 2026**.

*Ukraine is waging a war on three levels simultaneously — the front, Russian logistics, and Russia's war industry. Without Western support in weaponry and financing, none of these three levels would be possible. The next time a European minister hesitates to sign a check for Ukraine, I would like them to look at this list of synchronized strikes and measure what their hesitation costs.*

## Conclusion: what Striletska Bay tells us about the future

### The irresistible logic of progressive reconquest

The strike on **Striletska Bay** on **June 11, 2026** is not an isolated event. It is the expression of an irresistible logic: Ukraine does not give up. Every documented strike, every destroyed depot, every sunk or damaged ship says the same thing — that an illegal occupation and an unprovoked aggression carry a growing and systemic cost for the aggressor. That logic does not waver. It accelerates.

The Black Sea is no longer **Putin**'s private lake. **Crimea** is no longer an impregnable fortress. **Sevastopol** is no longer out of reach. And the **Neptune** — the weapon born of refusal — continues to find its targets. This letter ends where it began: with the conviction that resistance has meaning, that precision is a form of justice, and that Ukraine deserves the world to keep watching what it accomplishes.

### The promise of Neptune 2

*The promise of a Neptune 2 co-developed with MBDA is not merely an industrial announcement. It is the promise that Ukraine will be armed to defend its peace, whatever the outcome of the coming negotiations. An armed peace is infinitely better than a submitted peace. Stockholm understood this. Ukraine always knew it.*

The memorandum signed between **MBDA** and the **Luch Bureau** on **June 16, 2026** to develop the **Neptune 2** is a promise pointed toward the future. A next-generation Ukrainian missile, co-developed with European expertise, capable of striking farther, more precisely, with a larger payload. This promise means that whatever happens in the coming months — ceasefire or not, negotiations or not — Ukrainian military capabilities will continue to develop. Ukraine's deterrence will be stronger tomorrow than it is today. And that is exactly how lasting peace is built: not on negotiated weakness, but on sufficient strength to make aggression no longer worth the price.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Defence Express — Neptune Missile Hits Russian Weapons Depot in Striletska Bay — July 1, 2026](https://en.defence-ua.com/news/ukraine_strikes_sevastopol_neptune_missile_hits_russian_weapons_depot_in_striletska_bay_video-18784.html)

- [Ukrinform — Ukrainian Navy strikes Russian Black Sea Fleet military facility in Sevastopol — June 11, 2026](https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4132932-ukrainian-navy-strikes-russian-black-sea-fleet-military-facility-in-sevastopol.html)

- [Militarnyi — Ukrainian Navy Destroyed Weapons Storage Facilities in Sevastopol with Neptune Missiles — June 11, 2026](https://militarnyi.com/en/news/ukraine-destroyed-weapons-storage-neptune/)

- [Ukrainska Pravda — Ukraine General Staff reports strike on Penza facility of Russian space agency — July 1, 2026](https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/07/01/8041887/)

### Secondary sources

- [Kyiv Independent — Ukraine strikes military targets in Crimea on June 11 — June 11, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/explosions-rock-crimea-amid-large-scale-attack-across-peninsula/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Storm Shadow maker MBDA to help develop Neptune 2 with Ukraine — June 17, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/17/storm-shadow-maker-mbda-to-help-develop-new-neptune-cruise-missile-with-ukraine/)

- [Euromaidan Press — Russo-Ukrainian war, day 1588 — June 30, 2026](https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/30/russo-ukrainian-war-day-1588-ukraine-have-knocked-out-nearly-200-russian-air-defense-systems-since-start-of-year/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/lettre-ouverte-a-la-flotte-russe-de-la-mer-noire-le-neptune-vous-a-trouves-meme-