The Russian troops, carrying out repeated air and missile strikes in Ukraine against civilians, including medics and rescue workers, are repeating their own tactics in Syria.
What is known about the "Syrian tactics" used by Russia in war against Ukraine
Today I’d like to focus on credible reports of the Russian military’s use of secondary strikes in Ukraine against civilians – including paramedics and first responders – who gather to assist victims of a first, initial strike. The Russian government is following its own example from Syria, where it carried out dozens of such airstrikes killing civilians, first responders, and humanitarian workers, said during the meeting of the Permanent Council of the OSCE Timothy Hanway, Charge d'Affaires of the US Mission to the OSCE
He recalled experts in the 2022 report of the Moscow Mechanism of the OSCE noted "clear patterns of violations of international humanitarian law by Russian troops during hostilities."
Repeated attacks on the civilian population were considered separately, in particular the "Kalibr" strike on March 1, 2022 on Svoboda Square in front of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
5-7 minutes after the rescuers arrived, a second strike by a similar missile hit the building. This means rescuers and those injured in the first attack were deliberately targeted, Ganway said.
Evidence has since emerged that Russia has killed more than 90 medical workers, police and firefighters and injured nearly 350 civilians across Ukraine using these tactics, he said.
In March and April alone, Russia's repeated attacks on first responders killed about 30 rescue workers in Odesa, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, and injured more than 20, the US representative said.
Russia attacked the Lviv region using "Syrian tactics"
On March 24, the Russian army attacked the same critical infrastructure object in the Lviv region, first with cruise missiles and/or Shaheds, and then a few hours later struck again with Kinzhals.
Firefighters who extinguished the fire were warned in time about the attack. They managed to move to a safe place.
The enemy already used similar terror tactics during the missile attack on Odesa on March 15, 2024.
At that time, the Russian Federation first hit one of the infrastructure facilities in the city, and after some time, an Iskander ballistic missile hit the same place where search and rescue operations were already underway, and this increased the number of victims (21 people were killed then, 73 were injured ).
