PUTIN’S SLEDGEHAMMER
In Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos (PublicAffairs, May 13, 2025), journalist Candace Rondeaux reveals the hidden history of how Yevgeny Prigozhin leveraged his criminal underworld connections and mastery of patronage politics to build the world's most notorious mercenary army.
…THE NEW PROXY WARS
…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.
