One soldier added: “We refuse to fight with assault rifles against tanks.

“Generally speaking, it’s a complete mess and the men are dying.”

Russia has launched aggressive attacks on Ukraine over the last two and a half years, but this has led to a high number of casualties.

Ukraine and its Western allies believes that 700,000 Russians have been killed or wounded since the start of the invasion.

Moscow is very secretive when it comes to these figures.

However, Putin’s relative this week accidentally revealed Russia’s own estimates of how many losses its forces have endured.

Anna Tsivilyova, the daughter of Putin’s cousin and a deputy defence minister, said the Kremlin has received tens of thousands of appeals from relatives trying to establish what has happened to men on the frontline.

She said: “The Ministry of Internal Affairs takes [DNA] absolutely free of charge at their own expense, and enters into its database all the relatives who have applied to us. I’ve already said 48,000.”

Defence committee chief Andrei Kartapolov intervened to urge people not to share these figures.

He said: “Anna Yevgenyevna [Tsivilyova] has mentioned figures here, including missing persons. I earnestly ask you not to use these figures anywhere. This is such sensitive, closed information. And when we draw up the final documents, we should not include these figures anywhere.”

Ms Tsivilyova then said: “I didn’t give the numbers of missing people, but the number of requests to us. Many of them will be found. So this number is specifically requests, not data.”

While Russia seems to be suffering a lot of casualties, the “meat-grinder” tactic is reaping reward.

According to reports, Moscow’s troops have taken around 900 sq miles in eastern Ukraine and in Russia’s western Kursk region.

UK Defence Intelligence says Russia has done this at “enormous cost”.