Russian commanders are “pushing” troops “to be nasty” so that they can get food from Ukrainian villagers. Reporter John Sweeney who is in Ukraine said in his online video diary of the war described the situation on the ground first hand.

He said, “The Russian army is about 15 kilometres this way, occasionally there’s a crump of artillery we can hear.

“I was wrong to say yesterday the Russian army is going back.

“That’s not true, they’re not going back but they’re not going forward.

“I’ve spoken to a taxi driver who said the village is saying the Russian soldiers are coming up to them and saying, have you got any food?

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“And the other thing that’s happening at the same was they’re not aggressive… it’s their commanders pushing them to be nasty.

“But the individual Russian soldiers are kind of, please can help us and give you some food.

“So, Vladimir Putin’s got a problem, that he’s launched this invasion but his soldiers are hungry and they don’t want to fight.”

Since 24 February Russia has had more than 14,400 soldiers killed in action and has so far lost five Generals.

Lord Richard Dannatt, the former head of the British armed forces has warned Vladimir Putin that his soldiers are “absolutely confused” and “frightened” with many “refusing to return to Russia.”

Lord Dannatt said the Putin’s soldiers were “briefed really poorly” and are hungry as they have no food and are stealing from houses to eat.

Lord Dannatt told BBC Breakfast on Saturday, “We understand that they were briefed really poorly, that they would go, that they’d be moving quickly, they’d be welcomed as peacekeepers and liberators, but in fact what they found was that the Ukrainian armed forces, Ukrainian civilians were fighting resolutely against them.

“These young men are absolutely confused, many of them are very young, frightened, exhausted from weeks of exercising.”

He added, “These young men, not only frightened, are now hungry, the fuel for their tanks is not available, so they’ve been placed in a terrible situation.

“It’s therefore no surprise the Russian army has not made progress on the ground. They’ve had to resort now to this morally indefensible tactic of shelling defenceless civilians.”