In the early hours of November 19, Russia carried out another large-scale air assault on Ukraine using drones and cruise missiles. The worst devastation was inflicted on the city of Ternopil, where Russian missiles and drones partially destroyed two high-rise residential buildings. By the afternoon of November 19, at least 25 people had been killed and another 73 injured. AirGuard, a Ukrainian monitoring channel, published footage that appears to show the moment one of the residential buildings was struck. Meduza examined the video and determined that the weapon used was an X-101 cruise missile. Ukraine’s Air Force Command subsequently confirmed this analysis, tracing the launches to six Tu-95MS and four Tu-160MS strategic bombers operating from Russia’s Vologda and Astrakhan regions.

The video published by AirGuard

Judging from the footage, the missile was not intercepted by Ukraine’s air defenses; its engine is audible right up until the missile strikes the apartment building. In the first second of the video, the X-101 releases infrared countermeasures. Russia’s military regularly uses this type of missile in attacks on Ukraine, and it isn’t the first time Moscow has fired the X-101 at civilian infrastructure. For example, an X-101 partially destroyed the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv in July 2024.