“The Double Tap” = Russia killing first responders. A combat medic tells me: “You rarely hit a playground full of kids with a missile by accident. And you definitely don’t hit it twice by accident.”
JUN 26, 2026
BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN
It will come as no surprise when I tell you that Russia has committed tens of thousands of war crimes in Ukraine over the last four and a half years.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor General has documented more than 200,000 war crimes, tens of thousands of civilians killed, raped, kidnapped and millions displaced.
Of course, no war is ever attractive. But the Russian way of war has always been particularly inhuman, in the essence of the word in-human. Both to its enemies as well as to its own soldiers. Putin shares with Stalin a fondness for sending ill-equipped and un-trained soldiers to the front to pretty much certain death. This is often described as “the meat grinder.”
But even in the evil world that is the Russian way of war – there are particularly perverse aspects. One is using rape as a weapon. Another is the kidnapping of children. And a third one – I present to you “The Double Tap.”
“Double-tap strikes are a cruel tactic of war in which an initial strike is followed shortly thereafter by a second strike, aimed purposefully at first responders or civilians rushing to aid the victims of the first attack.“ (As defined by the organization Just Security)
Trying to make Ukrainians give up
According to experts, the Russians developed and honed their “double tap” tactics already during their war in Syria.
In Ukraine, Putin first tried driving his tanks to Kyiv in three days. When that didn’t work and the Ukrainians forced the Russian army to withdraw, the Russians tried trench warfare instead. When that didn’t work, the Kremlin ordered bombing to smithereens the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. And when that still did not break the Ukrainians, he changed tactics to bombing apartment blocks at night.
Spring 2026 has been the deadliest months for Ukrainian civilians, with April and May recording the highest civilian casualty toll since April 2022, according to the UN.
At least 274 civilians were killed and 1,763 injured in Ukraine in May 2026, and 238 were killed in April.
Especially during the past year, observers say, these bombings of civilian targets have increasingly been accompanied by the use of “the double tap.”
Maybe aiming the missiles at first-responders, ambulance people, firefighters and medics – and, of course, family and friends rushing to the bomb site fearing the worst for their loved ones – could do the terror job?
Russia is increasing its use of the “double-tap”
According to Anhelina Hrytsei from the human rights organization Truth Hounds, “Russian forces have sharply increased their use of so-called ‘double-tap’ strikes in Ukraine over the past year”, “deliberately targeting the same location twice in order to hit emergency responders.”
In 2025, Truth Hounds counted more than 100 such incidents. The UNHCR says 130.
The Truth Hounds expert says that the growing use of “the double tap” tactic coincides with a broader rise in attacks on civilians, hospitals and humanitarian workers.
“Such strikes,” Hrytsei says, “are intended to demoralize the population and undermine resilience in frontline regions across eastern, southern and northern Ukraine.”
According to Truth Hounds:
Russian forces are using drones equipped with cameras to monitor strike sites after the first attack – so they know the presence of identifiable rescue crews and family members running to the bomb site – before they launch a second assault.
“An indication,” Hrytsei says, of “deliberate targeting.”
Barbarism
Last Autumn, Russia bombed a passenger train in the Sumy region – and then hit it again some minutes later – as rescue workers had arrived to the scene.
“These were targeted and deliberate Russian drone strikes on passenger trains. Not one, but two strikes one after another,” said the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Syhiba.
“This is one of the most barbaric Russian tactics—the so-called ‘double-tap’—with the second attack hitting rescuers and people who are evacuating.”
International organizations have repeatedly condemned the Russian “double-tap” as “war crimes”, but mainly in general terms.
The only high-ranking western government official to directly condemn this Russia tactic was the then US ambassador to Kyiv, Bridget Brink, who in 2024 described a Russian missile attack on Zaporizhzhia in this way:
“Russia attacked Zaporizhzhia today, killing 3 people with missile strikes timed 40 minutes apart – a horrific pattern apparently intended to kill first responders [and] journalists on the scene.”
Brink stressed that Russia should be held accountable for these crimes against Ukrainian civilians.
As is known, in 2025, Brink resigned from her post, because, as she put it, “Trump kept siding with Putin over our democratic partner [Ukraine].”
Last Autumn, after the attack on the train in Sumy, President Zelensky called for “action” from the West, saying: “We’ve heard resolute statements from Europe and America – and it’s high time to turn them all into reality.”
Combat medic and eyewitness to Russia’s “double tap”
The Danish combat medic Johan Hansen
I decided to talk to somebody who knows better than most the consequences of “the double tap.” And who belongs to the group of courageous people who are the direct aim for this particular Russian tactic.
The Danish combat medic Johan Hansen has been in Ukraine since the war started. (You can hear an extended interview I did with Johan a-year-and-a-half-ago here). Before Ukraine, Johan worked as a combat medic in Bosnia and Afghanistan.
In fact, at the moment Johan is convalescing in Lviv in Western Ukraine, after he, in November, was badly injured doing his work close to the front line in Eastern Ukraine.
“We got cornered by some Russian drones and grenades, and I was hit in the head. I got some sort of permanent brain injury, a broken jaw and lost some teeth.”
“I am okay,” he downplays his injuries. “I am okay. I am training every day, I am improving, I will be fine.”
He is now spending his time helping with the rehabilitation of veterans from the Ukrainian army.
“Yeah, sure, I have seen the results of the Russian ‘double tap’ several times,” Johan says, “and I have been under one ‘double tap’ myself once.”
“A couple of years ago, in Kharkiv, we were on our way to the frontline when a nearby residential area – high rises – was hit, and we rushed to the area. One of the ends of the building, a four or five-story building, had been hit and had collapsed and there were several casualties, both dead and injured.”
“We went into the building and started to evacuate people. Some were trapped under the rubble.”
“Suddenly there was a lot of shouting from outside that a second ballistic missile was coming. We rushed out of the building, and when we were about 50 meters away, the building next to it was hit.”
“Luckily, in that instance, there were no further casualties, just a few more injured. But it just shows you that the Russian tactic of the ‘double tap’ is central to the Russian way of fighting a war.”
‘Russia’s purpose is to kill, to terrorize’
“And we saw that again last week in Kharkiv when five firefighters lost their lives – Russia is using ‘the double tap’ to spread terror.”
Facebook commemoration post for four of the five firefighters who were killed recently in Kharkiv by Russian “double taps”
“Unfortunately, we continue to lose those who save lives,” the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs, Ihor Klymenko, said.
(In the bizarre world of so-called ‘balanced journalism’,) I mention to Johan that Messrs Putin and Lavrov claim that Russia never ever deliberately hit civilians.
“That is a lie. The Russian systematically try to kill civilians. Hundreds of such cases have been documented. I have seen many with my own eyes. Their purpose is to kill civilians.”
“And the main purpose of the ‘double tap’ is to keep people away from helping these civilians after the first hit.”
I ask Johan how the Russian ‘double tap’ has changed the way medics and first responders like himself work – can work?
“Well, we get the warning that a second missile is coming our way, but sometimes there is simply not enough time to get to safety. My Ukrainian colleagues know the risk, of course, but when people are lying suffering in a bombed-out building, they will go in – no matter what.”
One of the worst examples of the “double tap” was in Sumy on Palm Sunday 2025. Russia killed 35 people on their way to visit family or to church.
“The first missile hit a civilian building in the city center. As emergency responders and bystanders rushed to help the wounded, a second missile struck– this time armed with cluster munitions -raining lethal bomblets over a crowded street,” as a report described the horror.
“The second ballistic missile was filled with fragmentation elements and exploded in the air to inflict maximum damage on people,” Sumy’s regional military head Serhiy Kryvosheyenko said.
“Only absolutely filthy scum could do this,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thundered.
Bombing playgrounds is not mistake
In other instances, playground have been hit by the first Russian missile – and first-responders and parents dashing to save their children have then been hit by the second Russian missile.
“I think this is a particularly clear illustration of the way the Russian army is thinking,” Johan explains, “it is a systematic thing, terror.”
“You rarely hit a playground full of kidswith a missile by accident. And you definitely do not hit it twice by accident.”
“That is something you only do deliberately. It is the true face of the enemy we have here in Ukraine. This is what they do.”
“We have seen them kill many, many civilians for fun. I was in Bucha an Irpin when the Russian had just been forced out, and I was helping get people out from the basements there, the ones still alive but also the ones the Russians had raped and killed, children and adults.”
“All the bad things that you can ever imagine that one person can do to another person, the Russians are doing – both ‘the double tap’, the raping, killing of women and children. It is a systematic terror campaign.”
“Historically, this is what the Russian empire has been doing to Ukrainians, for centuries.”
“It is all Russia’s attempt to erase Ukraine and the Ukrainians from the map.”
“But, as you can see from the past almost four-and-a-half years – it is not working, the Ukrainians will fight to the death.”
© 2026 Andersen & Bonner
Michael Andersen and Brian Bonner have extensive experience as journalists and media trainers, as well as in other roles in Ukraine, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.
Michael Andersen covered Ukraine and the rest of the former Soviet Union for Denmark’s Radio and Danish newspapers, mainly Politiken, for 15 years. He specializes in long-form features. He has produced almost 1,000 radio reports/podcasts, often covering people and places overlooked by other journalists. He focused on the consequences of political decisions on the lives of ordinary citizens. Since 2006, he has also produced several television documentaries from the region for Aljazeera English. Additionally, over the past 20 years, he has run several large-scale media development projects in the region for the Danish and British governments, as well as the European Union and the United Nations. He was trained as a political scientist and worked for 10 years as a professor of international relations at British, Ukrainian, and Central Asian universities.
Brian Bonner led the Kyiv Post, Ukraine’s English-language newspaper, from 2008 to 2021. He currently works for The Cipher Brief. From 2022 to 2024, he served as senior editor for Geopolitical Intelligence Services, a digital think tank. He is an American who substituted regularly as a Moscow correspondent for the then-Knight Ridder newspapers from 2000-2006. From 1983 to 2007, he covered international, national, and local news for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota. On behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, he served as a political analyst on six election observation missions in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Ukraine between 1999 and 2013. He also was associate director of international communications for the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids in 2007-2008. He has a B.A. in History from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Comment from :
The russian double tap tactic to kill Ukrainian emergency services is a vile one.
“More drone attacks in the same area wounded three male utility workers (29, 39 & 55) and two male police officers (22 & 32). A drone attack also wounded a 45-year-old man, who was about to be evacuated by medics, but another drone struck the group, wounding two male medics (51 & 62).”
https://brendankelley.substack.com/p/kherson-weekly-15-21-june-2026
“The Russians’ “Double-Tap” Strike Tactics (Tribunal for Putin, June 5th)”
https://ukraineinformationgroup.substack.com/p/news-from-ukraine-bulletin-199
An absolutely harrowing read.
Yet it’s a great article.
Isn’t there anything that would finally move Ukraine’s “allies” to stop being so impassive and finally act decisively with military power to kick these satanic nazis out?
“But even in the evil world that is the Russian way of war – there are particularly perverse aspects. One is using rape as a weapon. Another is the kidnapping of children. And a third one – I present to you “The Double Tap.”
Even an ignoramus like Krasnov knows of these facts, yet the only thing that upsets the geriatric putlerist is dead orcs.
Since the defenders risk unjust and unfair criticism if they mirror the satanic tactics of the enemy, it is up to the “allies” to provide them with the sort of firepower that will render a resort by the defenders to putler tactics unnecessary.
This was developed by the vermin when they razed Syria to the ground. There were no consequences then, and there are still no consequences for the vermin. They know they have committed thousands of war crimes, so adding more is not going to change anything.