Ukrainian air defenses shoot down 56 Russian drones, two Kh-59/69 missiles

Ukraine's air defense forces successfully shot down 56 Russian drones and two Kh-59/69 missiles late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian Air Force announced this in a Telegram post, according to Ukrinform.

"Overnight into November 20, 2024 (starting from 19:30 on November 19), the enemy launched a strike using an S-300 anti-aircraft guided missile fired from the Belgorod region at the Kharkiv region, along with five Kh-59/69 guided air missiles aimed at the Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions. The occupiers also attacked Ukraine with guided aerial bombs and launched 122 Shahed UAVs, as well as other unmanned aerial vehicles of an unidentified type from Russia's Kursk, Oryol, and Primorsko-Akhtarsk," the post reads.

The air attack was repelled by aviation, anti-aircraft missile troops, electronic warfare units, mobile fire teams of the Ukrainian Air Force and Ukrainian Defense Forces.

By 11:00, it was confirmed that two Kh-59/69 missiles and 56 enemy UAVs had been shot down across several Ukrainian regions, including Kyiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv.

As a result of active countermeasures, 58 enemy UAVs were lost from radar in different regions, with six drones leaving Ukrainian airspace -- five heading towards Russia and one to Belarus.