THE US risks losing the war in Afghanistan if it continues to repeat the mistakes that once helped the Taliban's defeat the Soviet Union back in the 1980s.

"There are many similarities between the Soviet embassy of the 1980s and the American embassy of 2009," Zamir Kabulov, Russia's outgoing ambassador in Kabul, told reporters.

He said the gloomy picture of present-day Afghanistan reminded him of his own diplomatic past.

"There are a lot of similarities as well as differences. The outcome in both cases is quite poor."

Kabulov, a veteran diplomat who worked in the Soviet embassy in Kabul throughout the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, listed examples of Soviet mistakes he believed were now being repeated.

"Neglect of the population, failure in establishing firm cooperation with local communities [and] leaving them at the behest of the enemy."

The Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s after a failure 10-year war.

The remarks by the Russian ambassador, whose surname coincidentally means "from Kabul" in Russian, come at a time when NATO-led troops are engaged in the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, when Taliban were forced from power.

As the war enters its ninth year, violence is increasing sharply as casualties mount and many in the West begin to question their nations' involvement in the US-led war.

Kabulov said Afghanistan was slipping back into chaos.

"It makes me feel very sad that after having spent so much time in Afghanistan... I am leaving a country that is still at war without any firm prospects of improvement," he lamented.

"If you compare the situation with five or six years ago, it is of course much worse," he said.

"Our partners have lost a lot of opportunities to really control the country, to help assist the Afghan government, " he said.

Kabulov said he supports a request by General Stanley McChrystal, the top US and military commander in Afghanistan, for the deployment of more US troops.

"It's the right way to go."

There are now more than 100,000 Western troops are now in Afghanistan nearly as many as Moscow had at the height of its occupation.

Kabulovs remarks come at a time when NATO-led troops are engaged in the fiercest fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, when Taliban were forced from power.

As the war enters its ninth year, violence is increasing sharply as casualties mount and many in the West begin to question their nations' involvement in the US-led war.

General McChrystal warned Thursday that the war will "not remain winnable indefinitely."

"The situation is serious and I choose that word very, very carefully," he told the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank in London.