A leading war expert has claimed Brits should back the controversial National Service idea put out by under-fire Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as it could finally help the West beat Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The vast majority of the UK recoiled in horror when Sunak announced last week he'd bring back a form of conscription for over 18s as part of his bid to win next month's General Election.

However, when asked by the Daily Star what could be next for Russia after it suffered its deadliest day of its invasion into Ukraine more than two years on, Professor Anthony Glees claimed that we should actually be looking more at what would help us stop him.

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And a big part of that could be the controversial policy. Speaking exclusively to the Daily Star, Professor Glees said: “We must remember that everything Putin says is propaganda, to put it short and simple you can't believe a word he says about anything.

He is not going to nuke us, he would be obliterated if he did so. Increasingly we are demonstrating that we understand he wants to win a conventional war and so we are going to do more with conventional weapons to put Putin back in his box.

“Sunak's idea of National Service may have been clumsily set out but its basic idea is not just sound, it is exactly what the doctor ordered. More conventional forces will deter Putin from thinking he can get his way beneath the nuclear threshold by sending hundreds of thousands of Russians into the mincing machine that is NATO weaponry.

“Those pooh-poohing the idea (including some current armed forces chiefs) don't understand that nukes and cyber do not win conventional battles. Troops do.”

Putin is now said to be losing around 1,200 troops per day, with Russian losses in Ukraine said to have topped more than 1.5million, according to Ukrainian figures, with more than one million of those being soldiers who have suffered injuries so bad that they can no longer return to the front line.

Putin's forces have also seen more than 15,000 armoured combat vehicles destroyed, and nearly 8k tanks blown up.

Glees added: “That is a massive and ultimately unsustainable number of killed and wounded and there are far too many casualties to keep under wraps as Putin tries to do. After two years of Putin's repugnant attack against a free people, it is more than the total number of British troops killed in WW2 (380,000 over six years).

“More than twice that number were killed in WW1, the point being that Russian losses will be the same as the UK's WW1 losses if the war carries on, and there was not a family in Britain after either WW1 or WW2 that was not personally affected by the loss of our brave menfolk. It will be exactly the same in Russia and it spells ultimate doom for Putin.”