Russian intonation is traditionally described in terms of nuclei, pre-nuclei and post-nuclei. Nowadays accurate data is available on the melodic movement within the nucleus and pre-nucleus. The post-nuclei (tails) lack detailed descriptions, probably because (a) long post-nuclei are quite rare and (b) post-nuclei are often treated as automatic and unable to affect the meaning of the phrase or add extra connotations. In this paper we describe the variability of post-nuclear melodic movements for the most frequent types of nuclei. The material was a large labelled Russian speech corpus (CORPRES). We analyzed IPs with long post-nuclei in terms of direction of melodic movement within the post-nucleus and intervals. This enabled us to find typical and rare tail movements. Then, we performed a perception experiment to determine how native speakers perceive phrases with non-typical movements within the post-nucleus. For this, typical realizations were modified into falling to low, level high and rising to very high. The experiment showed that in most cases the modified signal differed from the original. Modifications into rising movements often contained additional connotations, mostly “non-finality”. Modifications into falling movements were rarely described as having additional connotations.