Ukrainian trenches have become infested by rats and mice in a stark echo of the First World War, it has been reported.

Rodent numbers have surged along the largely static 621 mile frontline, infecting soldiers with nausea-inducing diseases that have left some bleeding from the eyes.

Videos shared on social media show mice and rats found in beds, backpacks, power generators, pockets, pillowcases and mortars.

“Imagine going to bed, and the night begins with a mouse crawling into your pants or sweater, or chewing your fingertips, or biting your hand,” a Ukrainian soldier going by the callsign Kira told CNN.

She added that 1,000 rats shared the trench where she and three others are stationed on the southern front in Zaporizhzhia.

There are so many rodents, Kira said, that even popular trench cats cannot keep on top of their rapidly-growing numbers.

The nocturnal vermin are believed to be attracted to the warmth and food they can find in the trenches amid bitterly cold winter conditions, with temperatures dropping as low as -25C in recent weeks.

Soldiers said the animals had chewed through electrical wires, spoiled rations and disturbed exhausted troops’ much-needed rest.

Last year, fighting prevented crops being harvested in some areas, providing the sustenance for a bumper mating season among the animals which reached its peak in the autumn.

“It will get colder and colder, and they will go into the trenches more and more,” said Ihor Zahorodniuk, a researcher at Ukraine’s National Museum of the History of Ukraine.

“The situation will not change until they all go through this.”

Mr Zahorodniuk said specialist mice-catching units should be set up to focus on exterminating the rodents and stopping further damage to the armed forces’ “combat capability”.

There are also infestations in the Russian trenches, where mounds of rat excrement have been responsible for spreading disease and infection among Moscow’s troops.

Ukraine’s defence intelligence said in December that rat-bite fever had been spreading rapidly among Russian soldiers on the Kupyansk front.

The men’s officers were said to have believed their rank-and-file were trying to avoid fighting when complaints first emerged, allowing the fever to spread “en masse”.