Vladimir Putin is “desperately clinging on to power” as he does not trust his successor if he leaves, it has been claimed.

The war in Ukraine has seen thousands of Russian troops killed and the country’s economy threatened by Western sanctions.

Despite this, Putin has maintained his grip on power after an election victory in which he received 87 percent of the vote after barring prominent opponents from the ballot.

Russia expert Mark Galeotti says Putin’s current situation shares similarities with the final stages of the Soviet Union before its collapse in the early 1990s.

He told Times Radio: “I think the election is a signal of a process that has been happening since the February 2022 invasion.

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“This is what late-Putinisn looks like, where elections are just sham civic rituals. Where an increasingly ageing leadership is clinging onto power knowing full well that to abandon power is to put all your fate and fortune in your successor. They don’t trust their successors.

“Russia is under the pressure of military spending and is sliding slowly into economic stagnation, but for the moment can sustain itself.

“This all looks terrifyingly and depressingly familiar to the end days of the Soviet Union.”

Galeotti also warned that Putin cannot abandon his wartime rhetoric against NATO, meaning tensions between Moscow and the West are unlikely to calm in the future.

He said: “He doesn’t necessarily need the shooting war to go on forever, but Putin and Russia probably have two years or likely substantially longer in the tank.

“But what Putin cannot abandon is this wider war narrative. Whatever he gets in Ukraine he will say that it was a great triumph as Russia was up against the whole united West. But the point is the West is still our enemy.

“Putinism is now permanent wartime, it is something he cannot abandon.”

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine recently claimed that Putin’s army has lost over 400,000 men in the war since February 2022.

Kyiv has also lost a lot of men in the fighting. A Ukrainian soldier said earlier this week that they are losing so many men that it is impossible to retrieve the bodies.

The soldier told The Times they are “losing so many people, there are so many bodies we can’t even bring them all back.”

He added that the situation on the frontline is “f****** awful” and that Kyiv’s troops “can barely hold the line.”