Editor's note: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of violence.
The troops emerge and stagger to the center of the dusty path, then to their knees, hands on their heads. Seconds later, the Ukrainian drone footage shows, they are facedown, motionless, with a cloud of dust nearby.
Video footage obtained exclusively by CNN shows three Ukrainians being executed by Russian troops in late August during fighting near the besieged city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine after their trench was overrun.
The incident, described by a Ukrainian official who asked that certain details be withheld to protect the identity of the unit, is part of a series of executions that have become increasingly common this year.
Sources in Ukraine’s defense intelligence service have provided CNN with a list of 15 cases since November, most of them supported by drone video or audio, that the surrendering Ukrainian troops were killed by the Russians on the front lines rather than captured.
Ukraine's prosecutor general told CNN his office was investigating 28 such incidents since the war began, which have left a total of 62 Ukrainian servicemen dead.
The images from the Pokrovsk region appear to reflect the brutal tactics of the Russian military as they advance further into eastern Ukraine.
Moscow continues to push to reach Ukraine's strategic military hub of Pokrovsk, despite Kiev's recent gains in Russia's Kursk border region, fueling hopes that the Kremlin will be forced to deploy troops to defend Russia's borders.
Ukrainian prosecutors told CNN they believe the alleged killings are war crimes and part of an orchestrated policy by the Kremlin. “If prisoners of war surrender, if they show that they surrender, if they don't have weapons in their hands, then summary execution is a war crime,” Andriy Kostin, Ukraine's prosecutor general, told CNN.
Kostin argued that such crimes were committed in different areas of Ukraine, by different units, giving Kiev “the opportunity to claim that such a policy could be elevated to crimes against humanity. This policy is orchestrated by the Kremlin. It is an order from specific commanders.”
The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet responded to CNN's request for comment on the allegations.
The emergence of videos showing growing Russian tactics has left Ukrainian commanders in a quandary. They face the unenviable task of warning their troops and the world about Russian brutality, at the risk of undermining already weakened Ukrainian morale.
The Ukrainian official who made the drone footage from Pokrovsk available said their unit was aware of several similar cases on the frontline that had not been made public or investigated.
Several recent cases have been made public, with a unit in Toretsk claiming on Telegram that it had drone videos, published on Tuesday, of three Ukrainian troops emerging from a basement, holding up their hands to surrender, and then being shot by Russian forces. Prosecutors in the Donetsk region said they had opened an investigation into the “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with deliberate murder.”
Several Russian servicemen have been tried on charges of such killings, including one in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhia region. Ukrainian prosecutors allege the Russian was a convict who was released from a robbery sentence in November to serve in the Russian army’s 127th Motorized Rifle Division. Prosecutors have released drone footage that supports their claim that the Russian shot a Ukrainian soldier in January as he emerged from a trench near Priyutne with his arms raised and then knelt.
CNN obtained another drone video, also from the Zaporizhzhia region, showing Russian forces near the heavily contested village of Robotyne in May of this year ordering three Ukrainian soldiers to lie face down after their submarine was overrun. Ukraine’s defense intelligence service provided CNN with audio transcripts of intercepted conversations of what it said were orders from a Russian commander known as “Turk” to his subordinate in the field, “Maloy,” to kill the captives.
TURK: Knock them the fuck out, fucking finish them off, fucking finish them off.
MALOY: I see, copy.
TURK: Once you zero them, you report back.
The drone video shows the Russians opening fire as soon as all three Ukrainians are out of the trench and lying face down.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin is the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for his role in an alleged plot to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia, Kiev has been aggressively pursuing claims of genocide against Moscow. Kostin, the prosecutor general, suggested that the systematic nature of these alleged battlefield executions meant they could become part of the broader genocide case.
The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Dr Morris Tidball-Binz, visited Ukraine in May at the invitation of Kiev, partly to investigate reports of extrajudicial killings in the conflict.
A UN investigative source told CNN that some of the apparent executions of Ukrainian soldiers were the subject of their investigation. “There are many. There is a pattern. It suggests complacency, if not orders not to show mercy,” the source said, referring to the practice of showing no mercy.
“The killings are war crimes in themselves,” the source said, “and together they could amount to crimes against humanity.”
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