KHARKIV, Ukraine — Five emergency responders were killed and at least five others wounded in a Russian double-tap strike on Kharkiv while they were fighting a fire caused by an earlier attack, Ukrainian officials said.
The incident occurred overnight on June 14-15 in the Kholodnohirskyi district of Ukraine’s second-largest city, according to the Interior Ministry and the State Emergency Service. Rescuers had responded to an initial strike involving drones and missiles that ignited a fire at a civilian enterprise, officials said.
A follow-up ballistic missile strike then hit about 30 meters from the emergency crews, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. The second attack killed four firefighters from Kharkiv’s 6th State Fire and Rescue Unit and one civil protection specialist from the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration.
The rescuers who died were identified as Dmytro Boiko, Danylo Tishchenko, Serhii Makovetskyi and Vadym Zinchenko. Nine rescuers were reported injured in some accounts, with total casualties from the follow-up strike including additional wounded.
“Missile struck those who save lives,” officials said in describing the incident, which Ukrainian authorities characterized as a deliberate tactic of launching secondary strikes on first responders.
The strike formed part of a larger wave of Russian attacks across Ukraine that night, which also caused deaths and damage in Kyiv, according to officials.
Kharkiv authorities declared June 17 a day of mourning for the fallen rescuers.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, similar double-tap strikes targeting emergency services have been reported on multiple occasions, though the Russian government has not commented specifically on this incident. Moscow has previously described its military actions as targeting military infrastructure and has denied deliberately harming civilians.
Details on the exact type of munitions used in the Kharkiv strike remained under investigation, with early information from law enforcement pointing to Iskander missiles, according to regional officials.
The State Emergency Service confirmed the identities of the deceased and said operations continued despite the risks. No independent verification of the casualty figures was immediately available. Ukrainian prosecutors opened an investigation into the incident as a possible war crime.
As of Tuesday, rescue and recovery efforts in the affected area were ongoing amid continued air raid alerts in the region.
