Tag Archives: war

Book Review: Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos

My review for the Washington Independent Review of Books

An engrossing look at Yevgeny Prighozin’s soldiers-for-hire.

Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos is a gripping, research-tome-sized account of the origins and ascent of Russia’s infamous private-military company, easily one of the world’s most notorious mercenary outfits (after Blackwater, of course). Aptly titled, the book makes the cogent argument that such “private” companies can be (and are) wielded by the state, as long as that collusion remains veiled in plausible deniability.

Author Candace Rondeaux, an award-winning journalist, public-policy scholar, and director of Future Frontlines at the New America Foundation, gives us in Putin’s Sledgehammer an expansive chronicle, making connections few have traced, some gained by analyzing 130,000 leaked files from the many shell companies of Yevgeny Prighozin, Wagner’s former head, who died in a suspicious 2023 plane crash. The detailed analysis reads more like a breathless spy thriller than an academic exploration, owing not only to Rondeaux’s brilliance but also to her personal connection to the material: She was a student in St. Petersburg around the time Prighozin first met Putin, then mayor of the city.

The narrative begins in 1991, after the collapse of Russia’s Communist Party-led government. The planned economy of the post-Soviet state is in freefall, and a new and violent market logic (aka neoliberalism) is wreaking financial havoc. Mafia rules the streets, and oligarchs form behemoth, Frankenstein-esque companies in the chaos of widespread privatization.

Following the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1991, the Kremlin cut its military roughly in half. Soldiers returning home found almost no services to help them transition back to civilian life. “The downsizing created a huge pool of disillusioned and unemployed men trained to kill,” explains Rondeaux. Many of Russia’s future mercenaries met in informal, non-state-created veterans unions. Some became security for oligarchs, some worked for the mafia, and some ended up in prison — all spaces which would become important vectors for Russia’s nascent mercenary industry. The intricate jockeying for power at the state and private level birthed the Wagner Group.

Putin’s Sledgehammer really stands apart from other books on Wagner in its thorough, nuanced take on Prighozin. The public perception of him comes in disparate, singular labels: a former small-time criminal; a wildly successful hotdog salesman; a restaurateur-turned-government-caterer fondly referred to as “Putin’s Chef”; an internet-disinformation maverick; and, finally, leader of a formidable global mercenary group that eventually marched to Moscow, posing a first-of-its-kind threat to Putin’s rule.

And, indeed, Prighozin was all those things, but Rondeaux truly fleshes out this complicated, mercurial character. We ultimately come to see Prighozin as a marketing and entrepreneurial master (a doggedly hardworking one, at that), an image that belies the brash, uniformed strongman seen most recently before his death.

For example, Prighozin’s culinary acumen is often overlooked, his success as “Putin’s Chef” chalked up to favoritism. But the book tells a different story. In writing about the now-famous Russian state dinner at the Peterhof Palace on May 31, 2003, that hosted George W. Bush and other G8 leaders, Rondeaux paints the scene in mouth-watering detail:

“Sumptuous blinis stuffed with caviar and cream were served. Prighozin had spent nearly two years planning the menus and training the waitstaff on the intricacies of silver-service catering for heads of state. It was all part of the artful diplomatic ballet that Putin and the Kremlin had choreographed as part of Russia’s bid to return to the center of the world stage.”

But that return came to a halt after Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. Putin’s Sledgehammer’s argues that although this was a turning point in lifting the veil on the state’s global backstage-military maneuvers, Putin had begun to see Russia as pitted in a Cold War 2.0 against the U.S., and private military companies were the most expedient means of waging it.

“There is always a [mercenary-for-hire] middleman [like Wagner] in the US-Russia conflict,” Rondeaux writes. “The central tension had always been over who in Russia would reap the greatest share of profits and political rewards from Prigozhin’s successes and who would pay the price for his failures.”

In 2016, U.S. and E.U. sanctions began to bite at the Russian economy. Putin had long been fixated on the idea that oil and gas were his country’s pathway back to wealth and to a commanding place in the world order. As Rondeaux narrates in the cleverly titled chapter “Guns, Gas, and Oil” (a satirical nod to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a 1997 book challenging notions of Eurasian superiority), the Wagner Group emerged as the perfect solution for evading sanctions. By embedding itself in Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, and Mali, Wagner enabled the Russian oil-and-gas industry to expand outward. Similarly, Russia is a prime exporter of arms in the world, second only to America. Wagner, with its plausible-deniability cover of not being a state actor, made sure Russia had arms clients in the Middle East and Africa, sanctions be damned.

And once again, Prighozin, ever the diligent employee (and employer), ensured that natural resources kept flowing freely. When the group took over the Hayan gas plant in Syria, says Rondeaux, “Wagner didn’t just deploy fighters: they also flew in geologists, engineers, and fire control experts.” Prighozin also hired anthropologists and other “academic types” when he launched the now-infamous Internet Research Agency, the entity behind the 2016 U.S. election interference and a worldwide-disinformation campaigner of unrivaled sophistication and influence. To dismiss the IRA as a “troll farm” would be a gross mischaracterization; the book tells of Prighozin’s recruitment of bright young polyglots from Russia’s top schools, who had a keen understanding of the issues du jour and knew how to amplify prejudices.

With the war in Ukraine, Prighozin would become even more important: The Wagner Group was an expedient solution to Russia’s manpower problem. “For Putin to call for a full mobilization would have been tantamount to admitting failure, that the war was a war, not a special military operation, and that victory would not come as swiftly or cheaply as he had promised,” Rondeaux explains. Until its downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 — which left 298 civilians dead — Wagner had been mostly a (fearsome) battlefield rumor. Soon after, it sledgehammered its way into notoriety, helped by Prighozin’s ability to deliver pithy, fiery speeches on social media.

Putin’s Sledgehammer is a seminal work of incisive insight not only about the Wagner Group and its late charismatic leader but also about modern mercenaryism and why we should care about it. Rondeaux draws parallels few others have, the kind that could only come from a Russophile like herself. The famous quote of sociologist Charles Tilly that “war made the state, and the state made war” is borne out in her riveting story of the murky, byzantine ties between the state and its mercenaries (or, perhaps, the mercenaries and their state).

 

From Veteran to Venture: Kogod alum-turned-professor helps veteran entrepreneurs launch their businesses

My story for Kogod School of Business

Each year, roughly 200,000 US service members transition from the military to the private sector. Although veterans are twice as likely as non-veterans to be self-employed, their rate of business ownership has dropped precipitously from the entrepreneurial high of their predecessors in the last century.

Half of World War II veterans went on to own or operate a business—a similar rate to the 40% of Korean War vets who did the same almost a decade later. Of the more than 3.6 million people who have served in the military since September 11, 2001, only 4.5% have started a business. What has led to such an enormous gap in veteran entrepreneurship?

In short, more challenges—and fewer resources to overcome them.

Although 25% of veterans say they want to start their own businesses, they face more obstacles securing the capital needed to get their ideas off the ground than in the past. Unlike the GI Bill of 1944, the updated 2008 version does not include access to low-interest loans to start a business. The financing needs of veteran and non-veteran businesses are similar, research shows, but even though would-be veteran business owners submitted more loan applications and reached out to a wider variety of lenders, they typically obtained less financing and got lower approval rates.

Because of frequent travel and work abroad, some veterans are also struggling with building a credit history and amassing collateral. And while previous military drafts drew from all segments of society, this century’s all-volunteer armed forces are more likely to come from military families, making them increasingly isolated from the non-military community and the networks that facilitate business success.

Seda Goff—a Kogod adjunct professor and MBA alumna—is helping veteran entrepreneurs overcome these challenges in her role as the director of veteran entrepreneurship at the PenFed Foundation. Through the foundation’s Veteran Entrepreneur Investment Program (VEIP), veterans can get the seed capital and mentorship they need to build and grow their ventures.

“Veterans have given a lot to serve and protect us, and the skill sets that they gained in the process lend themselves perfectly to entrepreneurship,” Goff says. “This new generation of entrepreneurs feel that same desire to serve and to make a difference and be bigger than themselves.”

After graduating from Kogod, Goff worked for the US Department of Veterans Affairs before moving to PenFed, where she was able to build the nonprofit investment program from the ground up. Her passion for helping veterans stems from growing up in close contact with service members.

“My father was in the Turkish Navy. He worked for the navy for almost 30 years after we came to the US,” Goff recalls. “I loved being around service members and their families. Everybody is very mission- and service-oriented.”

Since launching in March 2018, the Veteran Entrepreneur Investment Program has invested in and offered resources to veteran entrepreneurs. And because veterans are 30% more likely to hire other veterans, the program’s benefits extend to the entire veteran community.

VEIP is funded by outside donors, with PenFed Credit Union matching up to $1 million in contributions. Returns on all investments go back into the program to support future veteran-owned ventures. “The success of veteran entrepreneurs allows the program to exist,” Goff explains. “The dividends go right back into investing in more entrepreneurs. The multiplier effect translates to growth for businesses that are ready to launch, established businesses that want to grow, and those that are still in the exploratory stages.”

In the future, the PenFed Foundation aims to develop new resources for veteran entrepreneurs in all stages of the business cycle, with a focus on women veteran entrepreneurs—who have grown from owning 2.5% of veteran-owned businesses in 2008 to 4.4% in 2012.

Goff, who works with the American University Entrepreneurship Incubator, hopes to one day launch an incubator for veteran entrepreneurs at Kogod, too.

“I feel like the majority of entrepreneurs are just problem solvers. And if you point them in a direction, they’re going to solve problems,” Goff says. “In my work, I have seen how a military career is not something that you need to transition away from to be successful. Serving already has given vets the tools for success.”

Of Men And War AFI Documentary Review

My review of Of Men And War for the Washington City Paper

The second feature film by French director Laurent Bécue-Renard (War-Wearied) offers an unprecedented and intimate look at PTSD and some of the war-ravaged men and women suffering from it. Set in the Pathway Home, a treatment facility in California for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the film benefits from its fly-on-the-wall approach, squarely turning its lens on the group therapy sessions and residents’ interactions with their families, which allows the soldiers to tell their own stories. They seem unable to extricate themselves from the war zone, forever held hostage and unable to unsee the horrors they’ve witnessed. They describe feeling “embarrassed, small, defective… crazy.” The degree of access granted the filmmaker is truly amazing, and it’s even more impressive considering the degree of trauma with which each of these soldiers is wrestling and the Herculean effort required of them to share something so antithetical to the “be stoic about it” military ethos. An unflinching exploration of the “collateral damage” of war trauma, the film poignantly illustrates that there is nothing collateral about it. Of Men And War is one of today’s most engrossing and gut-wrenching commentaries on the high cost of our recent military conflicts.