A retired U.S. Army general said he believes Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is dead.
The Kremlin on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Prigozhin on June 29, five days after the Wagner Group marched toward Moscow in a short-lived rebellion.
During an interview with ABC News, retired Gen. Robert Abrams questioned the alleged meeting between Putin and Prigozhin.
"I'd be surprised if we actually see proof of life that Putin met with Prigozhin, and I think it's highly staged," said Abrams, former commander of U.S. Forces-Korea. "And my personal assessment is that I doubt we'll see Prigozhin ever again publicly. I think he'll either be put in hiding or sent to prison or dealt with some other way, but I doubt we'll ever see him again."
Asked if he thought Prigozhin were alive, Abrams said: "I personally don't think he is, and if he is, he's in a prison somewhere."
Abrams discussed the ongoing Ukraine counteroffensive in its war against Russia.
"I think it's by President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy's own account, it's not going as fast or as well as everyone had hoped," Abrams said. "But we have to understand a few things.
"The Russians have been preparing these defenses and they understand this terrain. But for over a year, this is a well-entrenched enemy with countless minefields, obstacles, ditches, [and] tank obstacles with well-sighted artillery targets on top of them. And in the end, a pretty hardened enemy. So it's going to be difficult. It's going to be, as I've said and I've described before, a slugfest. But clearly, the momentum is with the Ukrainian armed forces."
ABC News pointed out to Abrams that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense said Russia is losing an average of 400 soldiers daily. The ministry said half of those casualties could have been prevented with proper first aid.
"That's a startling statistic, and to have a 50% [rate of] what we call died of wounds of rate," Abrams said. "Someone is injured on the battlefield and they expire before they can reach appropriate medical care, and they die of their wounds. A 50% died of wounds rate is astounding.
"And it's a huge crush on the morale of fighting men and women everywhere. And that's why in our own military, many people have heard of it. We call it the golden hour rule, which is why we go to such great lengths to ensure that after point of injury, that point of injury after immediate first aid is applied, we get our soldiers to an initial aid station where advanced life-saving care can happen within an hour. And with that, we have a 98% survival rate.
"So I'd have to say that this has got to be severely demoralizing to the Russian forces."
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