Candace Rondeaux – författare

The astonishing inside story of the Wagner Group, the world's deadliest militia"Putin's Sledgehammer provides an in-depth account of, and essential political and economic background to, the story of Prigozhin's meteoric rise and abrupt demise." ―Times Literary SupplementIn 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.

Proxy warfare will shape the conflicts of the twenty-first century for the foreseeable future. Yet the popular understanding of proxy wars remains largely shaped by the experience of the Cold War. In reality, in the Greater Middle East and its periphery today, the growing power of regional states and non-state actors, combined with the proliferation of new technology, has reshaped proxy conflicts, in an increasingly multipolar and interconnected environment.In this collected volume, a range of researchers examine what constitutes proxy warfare and provide new insight into how these wars are waged, in contexts stretching from Ukraine to North Africa and Syria to Afghanistan. The volume draws upon research, surveys and interviews conducted in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine, as well as examining the propaganda output of those involved in these countries' wars. In doing so, 'Understanding the New Proxy Wars' helps reveal both the continuities and the differences between recent conflicts and those of times past.