Mutinous Russian troops ran over their own commander, say western officials

A separate film released by the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, showed the commander, Yuri Medvedev, being transported by medical troops, in which he is clearly alive.

Britain and other western countries believe that Russian forces are suffering from increasingly poor morale as they incur heavy losses in the fighting. The US has estimated that 7,000 Russians have been killed, out of an invasion force of about 150,000.

Seven Russian generals have been killed in the fighting, which has also led to several thousand Ukrainian military fatalities and civilian casualties. The latest official UN figure for civilian deaths is 1,081 but that is almost certainly an underestimate.