Russia has suffered its bloodiest month since the war began, British military intelligence has said, as its forces made a series of gains in high risk attacks along the front line.

The Kremlin’s forces have pushed back Ukrainian soldiers and captured a string of towns and villages around the two-year anniversary of the war.

But the gains came at a cost of some 29,000 men killed or wounded in February alone. On Sunday Russian soldiers were thought to be closing in on their next target: the town of Chasov Yar, near to Bakhmut.

“The increase in the daily average almost certainly reflects Russia’s commitment to mass and attritional warfare,” the British Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence briefing.

Its data showed that for the past four months, the Russian army has sustained an average of more than 936 casualties every day. This is four or five times higher than its losses in the first few months after its February 2022 invasion.

The Kremlin launched a full-frontal attack against Avdiivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in November, eventually capturing the destroyed town in mid-February.

“Although costly in terms of human life, the resulting effect has increased pressure on Ukraine’s positions across the front line,” the British Ministry of Defence said, adding that Russia had now probably lost a total of 355,000 soldiers in two years.

Ukrainian soldiers have said that they lacked the arms and weapons to hold off the Russian attacks and also described a chaotic retreat from Avdiivka after days of brutal house-to-house fighting.

One Ukrainian soldier said Russian officers appeared to have no regard for their men, whom they sent to near-certain deaths.

“Russia sent in inexperienced troops in waves each morning, afternoon and evening. They appeared to be in their 40s or 50s, with no protective vests or helmets,” the soldier told the Washington Post.

Russian military bloggers said that there was now heavy fighting along the entire eastern front line which had moved several miles west of Avdiivka and Bakhmut, the town captured by Wagner mercenaries in May last year.

Rybar, a channel closely linked to the Russian ministry of defence, told its 1.2 million subscribers that Russian forces were making decent progress, although their commanders were still blundering by sending infantry to attack armoured vehicles without grenade launchers and drawing “maps based on beautiful video reports with flags in villages that have not yet been cleared”.