As Ukrainian diplomats arrived in Geneva on Tuesday to begin US-brokered peace negotiations, Ukraine's Special Operations Forces were simultaneously destroying Russian military hardware deep inside occupied Crimea. The message was deliberate and unmistakable: Kyiv negotiates from strength.
Ukrainian SOF struck an Iskander ballistic missile storage facility near Pasichne village in Bilohirsk Raion, temporarily occupied Crimea, triggering a large fire accompanied by a series of detonations, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In a separate operation on the same day, a Russian Ka-27 multi-purpose helicopter was destroyed near Kamyshly village, also in occupied Crimea.
Beyond the headline targets, Ukrainian forces destroyed or damaged more than ten enemy targets across Crimea in the broader operation, including ammunition and fuel depots. Three UAV control centers were also struck — in the Huliaipole area of Zaporizhzhia region, near Anatolyevka in Kursk, and in the Zatyshshya area.
The General Staff confirmed the operation was conducted using FP-2 strike drones — the same class of precision unmanned systems that have extended Ukraine's reach deep into Russian-controlled territory over recent months.
The Iskander system is not a peripheral target. Iskander-M ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 500 kilometers, are among the primary Russian precision strike weapons used against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Destroying storage facilities — rather than just the launchers — degrades Russia's ability to sustain its missile campaign against civilian populations. Every Iskander missile that detonates inside Crimea is one that will not strike Kharkiv, Odesa, or Kyiv.
The Ka-27 helicopter is a naval-oriented platform used for anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue, and troop transport — its presence in Crimea reflects the peninsula's continued role as a hub for Russian Black Sea operations, even as Ukraine's persistent targeting campaign has dramatically degraded the Black Sea Fleet over the past two years.
Ukraine's military leadership has been explicit about the strategic logic of the Crimea campaign. In a statement Tuesday, the General Staff said forces "will continue to systematically strike targets that provide command and control for the Russian aggressor's troops, aviation, and unmanned units."
The timing relative to Geneva is not coincidental. Ukrainian military doctrine, shaped by hard experience since 2014, holds that diplomatic progress requires military credibility. A Ukraine that is visibly degrading Russian military assets — including precision strike systems — arrives at the negotiating table in a fundamentally different position than one that has ceased operations in the hope of goodwill reciprocation.
Russia has shown no such goodwill. Even as the Geneva talks opened, Russian forces continued shelling civilian areas across the front line. Air raid alerts sounded in Kyiv and multiple regions of Ukraine on Tuesday morning.
The Crimea campaign has also carried political weight beyond the battlefield. The peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, remains a core element of Ukraine's territorial claims. Ukrainian strikes on Crimea — once considered strategically taboo by some Western partners — have become routine, normalized by successive successful operations and the evident inability of Russian air defenses to prevent them.
In Ukraine, as across nations defending their sovereignty, resilience is not just survival — it's determination to build a better future. Tuesday's strikes are part of that architecture: not just the diplomacy of words in Geneva, but the diplomacy of consequences, delivered from the air over Crimea.
