Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a cage of his own making, says defence secretary Ben Wallace

President Vladimir Putin is "a man in a cage he built himself” who is "not the force he used to be", the defence secretary has said as Russia's invasion of Ukraine drags on with little success for the antagonisers.

“President Putin is not the force he used to be. He is now a man in a cage he built himself," Ben Wallace said in an interview with Sky News.

“His army is exhausted, he has suffered significant losses.

“The reputation of this great army of Russia has been trashed.

“He has not only got to live with the consequences of what he is doing to Ukraine, but he has also got to live with the consequences of what he has done to his own army.

“We have seen it before. It always gets worse. It goes for more civilian attacks, more civilian areas.”

The Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin also echoed similar sentiments earlier this week.

Mr Radakin, who is the head of Britain’s armed forces, stated that Mr Putin was a “weaker and more diminished figure today” than he was before the invasion started on February 24.

He added that the UK was “incredibly cautious” about believing Russian claims of ground troops withdrawing from Kyiv but said there were signs the Kremlin was preparing to focus its efforts on the east and south of Ukraine.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to echo this assessment, when he said on Thursday that Russia was accumulating forces for "powerful" strikes on the eastern Donbas region.

In his daily video address, Mr Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces have been pushing away Russian troops in the north of Kyiv, but warned that they are now amassing resources in Mariupol, in the Kharkiv direction and in the Donbas for "powerful' strikes.

Mr Zelenskyy also claimed that Russia is trying to install their institutions in the Kherson region controlled by Russian forces following reports of the Kremlin's plans to stage an independence referendum in the region.

In the address he thanked Turkey for what he said was its readiness to become a "security guarantor for Ukraine."

Western officials have claimed that Vladimir Putin’s inner circle functions as an “echo chamber” and he “didn’t understand… what he was doing” in Ukraine.

“The echo chamber around him might very well reinforce his opinions, rather than challenge or debate,” a source said.

One official said there was a sense that he was “not really understanding the full picture, not really getting the right sources of information” about the war in Ukraine.

It was “a huge miscalculation” and that has to be because “he didn’t understand, to the full extent, what he was doing”.

The comments come after Government Communications Headquarters director Sir Jeremy Fleming said “Putin’s advisers are afraid to tell him the truth” about the situation in neighbouring Ukraine.

Last week NATO estimated that between 7,000 and 15,000 Russian troops had been killed since the war began in February.

Russia disputes this figure however, claiming that instead around 1,300 troops have died.

By way of comparison, the Kremlin lost about 15,000 troops in 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan.