(CNN) Two videos allegedly showing beheaded Ukrainian soldiers have surfaced on social media in the past week.
The videos appear to be from separate events – one of which may have been filmed very recently, while the other looks like it was filmed in the summer due to the amount of foliage on the ground.
The first video, posted on April 8 on a pro-Russian social media channel, was allegedly filmed by Russian Wagner Group mercenaries and appears to show the decapitated bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers lying next to a wrecked military vehicle on the lying on the ground.
In the video, a voice can be heard behind the camera, the audio seems distorted to prevent the speaker from being identified.
“(The armored vehicle) was struck by a mine,” says the Russian-speaking voice.
Apparently the voice refers to the bodies on the ground and continues, laughing: “They killed them. Someone approached her. They came up to them and cut off their heads.”
The hands of the dead soldiers also appear to have been cut off.
Russian social media accounts say the video was shot near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, which for many months has been the scene of the fiercest fighting of the war, which heavily involved Wagner fighters. CNN cannot independently confirm the location of the video.
The second video posted to Twitter, which is very blurry, appears to have been shot in the summer due to the many plants on the ground. It is said to show a Russian fighter beheading a Ukrainian soldier with a knife. A voice at the beginning of the video suggests the victim may have been alive when the attack began.
Shortly after the videos surfaced, Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, tweeted, “There will be accountability for everything.” An official Ukrainian government Telegram channel said the tweet was a direct reference to “a another execution video released by Russians”.
On Monday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Wagner “allegedly continues to commit war crimes by beheading Ukrainian soldiers in Bakhmut,” referring to a photo shared on pro-Russian social media sites and appeared to show something that had been severed Head which they claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, mounted on a spike.
The ISW has reported similar incidents in Popasna in the Luhansk region, where Wagner troops also operated early in the war.
Some pro-Russian social media accounts have suggested that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the beheadings to hide identities. This matches a similar claim made by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in January after his fighters apparently found bodies with severed hands and heads near Bakhmut.