An Inside Look at Putin’s Brutal, Bloody Mercenaries from a War Crimes Expert

Candace Rondeaux’s “Putin’s Sledgehammer" chronicles the fortunes of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Wagner Group

Jul 29, 2025

∙ Paid

IF AND WHEN VLADIMIR PUTIN FALLS FROM POWER, scholars will examine several key events for signs of his regime’s decline. Chief among them will be the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But the most serious challenge to his rule since 1999, beside the 2012 protests against the rigged election that returned him to the presidency, was the Wagner Group’s June 24, 20…

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to SpyTalk to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.

A guest post by

John Sipher

John Sipher, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, worked for the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service for 28 years. He is co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment, and the host of the podcast, “Mission Implausible.”