Lawfare Daily: ‘Putin’s Sledgehammer’ with Candace Rondeaux

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Candace Rondeaux, Senior Director of New America’s Future Frontlines program, Director of its Planetary Politics initiative, and professor of practice at Arizona State University joins Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss her recently published book, "Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos." They discuss Yevgeny Prigozhin and his founding of the Wagner Group, the Russian private military company (PMC); his rise, ranging from post-Soviet 1990s Russia to growing relationships with Putin and other power figures; and Wagner’s role in Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and other Russian objectives abroad. They also discuss Wagner and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Prigozhin’s “march on Moscow” in 2023 and his subsequent death, the research techniques that go into studying a group like Wagner, and what role PMCs will play in the future of Russian power.

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1:19.4	The one that we now know is the Internet Research Agency
1:21.6	that very famously was involved in fomenting anti-election, anti-clinton propaganda during the U.S. 2016 election.
1:33.5	It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Justin Sherman, contributing editor at Lawfare and CEO of
1:40.2	Global Cyber Strategies, with Candace Rondeau, Senior Director of New America's Future Frontlines
1:46.7	Program, and author of the recently published book, Putin's Sledgehammer, the Wagner Group
1:52.2	and Russia's collapse into mercenary chaos. Putin has really wielded the Wagner Group to great
1:58.7	effect as a weapon, to smash the global order, to
	...

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