It's hard to imagine what Ukrainian forces must have been feeling that day, as they had to fight both German and Soviet armies, two of the strongest forces in the war.

I flew on a Tu 154 during a reporting trip to Siberia in 1998. It was cramped and dark inside, but the plane was fast and sturdy. It felt a little like a Boeing 727.

The Tu 154 was designed and built by Tupelev in the mid-1960s as a medium-range airliner. It became the backbone of Soviet and Russian airlines for several decades. The jet serviced over a sixth of the world's landmass and carried about half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot. It remained the standard domestic airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s.

The Tu 154 was one of the fastest civilian aircraft in operation and had a range of 3,280 miles. It was capable of operating on gravel airfields, and was widely used in the extreme Arctic conditions where other jets were unable to operate.

Incoming! No, not really, but when I first saw the thumbnail-sized image of this it looked more like an attack than an installation.