Putin’s Sledgehammer by Candace Rondeaux
The astonishing inside story of the Wagner Group, the world’s deadliest militia.
In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler.
Wagner’s power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia’s conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner’s core commanders was blown up in midair.
That Yevgeny Prigozhin, a local criminal thug, was able to build a private army that was on the threshold of overwhelming the world’s second largest country seems incredible. In fact, it was inevitable following the hollowing out of the Russian military, the creeping use of contract groups for murky foreign missions, power struggles inside the Kremlin, and the ability of the new militias to corner and exploit the black economy.
Told with unique inside sourcing and expertise, Putin’s Sledgehammer is a gripping and terrifying account of a superpower that contracted its soul to a pitiless militia.
In Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos (published by PublicAffairs, May 13, 2025) the New America Foundation’s Candace Rondeaux reveals the hidden history of how Prigozhin parlayed his connections to the criminal underworld and patronage politics to build the world’s most notorious mercenary army. From his early days in St. Petersburg as a street thug turned caterer to Russia’s elite, Prigozhin’s ascent is juxtaposed with Putin’s transformation from a middling KGB agent to an unabashed autocrat obsessed with reclaiming Russia’s greatness. Delving deep into the kleptocratic rot and ultranationalist fervor that powered Russia’s post-Soviet revival, Rondeaux provides a panoramic view of Putin’s increasingly confrontational relationship with the West through the lens of Prigozhin’s trajectory.
Based on meticulous analysis of leaked documents, interviews with those who witnessed the action firsthand, and a deep dive investigation into the shadowy web of power brokers and shell companies that fueled Prigozhin’s exploits, Putin’s Sledgehammer traces the evolution of the Russian military’s experimentation with irregular paramilitary forces from the 1990’s to the implosion of the Wagner Group on the heels of the June 2023 mutiny. It explains how the merger of interests between Kremlin-connected powerbrokers, castoffs of Russia’s war machine, and the foot soldiers of the country’s shadow economy forged a private army into a global juggernaut that momentarily brought Putin’s tyrannical regime to a standstill.
The narrative situates Prigozhin in the weave of larger historical events in Russia and the world that evolved in tandem with Putin’s progressive break with the West. It explores how the Wagner Group, through a combination of opportunism and design, emerged as an integral part of the Kremlin’s strategy for challenging a post-Cold War order dominated by the United States and its NATO allies in Europe. A consummate entrepreneur, Prigozhin’s frenetic business style extended the reach of his shadow network of hired guns, propagandists, and gray market brokers across four continents–Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Along the way, the Wagner Group left a trail of destruction and war crimes in its wake in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic.
Putin’s Sledgehammer also highlights the role of the intrepid journalists, dissidents, detectives, government investigators, and information brokers who exposed the hidden tentacles of Russia’s unconventional warfare tactics and with them the Wagner Group enterprise. Embedded in this account is an exploration of how the advent of the digital age factored into Prigozhin’s rise and fall, painting a comprehensive picture of a clandestine world where politics, power, and warfare converge.
Rondeaux’s work has garnered invitations to testify before the United States Congress, deliver lectures and briefings to the International Criminal Court, Helsinki Commission on Human Rights, White House National Security Council, NATO, EU External Affairs Service, UK parliament members, AFRICOM HQ, and U.S. Special Forces, among others. She is Professor of Practice, Global Security Studies, at Arizona State University and Senior Director, Planetary Politics & Future Frontlines, at the New America Foundation.
About the Author
Candace Rondeaux directs Future Frontlines, a public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience, and the Planetary Politics initiative at the New America Foundation. A writer and public-policy analyst, Rondeaux is a professor of practice and fellow at the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University. Before joining New America, Rondeaux served as a senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace where she launched the RESOLVE Network, a global research consortium on conflict and violent extremism and as a strategic advisor to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Rondeaux has documented and analyzed political violence in South Asia, and around the world for the Washington Post and the International Crisis Group. Before going abroad for the Post in 2009, Rondeaux covered criminal justice in Maryland and Virginia, where she covered capital punishment and was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team of Post reporters who covered the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.
Rondeaux holds a B.A. in Russian area studies from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. in journalism from New York University, and an M.P.P. in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.