Dartmouth Events

The astonishing inside story of the Wagner Group, the world’s deadliest militia.

In 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.

Free and open to the public. Tickets required, get yours here.

The event will be livestreamed, sign up to attend online here.

A recording of the event will be posted on YouTube.

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Candace Rondeaux is the Senior Director at New America where she leads the Future Frontlines program, an open-source public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience. She also directs the Planetary Politics initiative, a policy research hub that aims to find solutions to the wicked problems posed by digitalization, decarbonization and geopolitical competition. A Professor of Practice with the Future of Security Initiative and faculty affiliate with the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Affairs at Arizona State University, she is expert on US national security and international affairs with extensive experience in producing high-impact analysis on crisis hotspots, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine. She has documented the impact of violent conflict around the world for The Washington Post, International Crisis Group, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. A leading specialist on Russia’s strategic deployment of irregular paramilitary forces, Rondeaux has testified in Congress and provided expert analysis to the UN about Wagner Group operations and she is the author of a forthcoming book on the topic, Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos. A contributing columnist for the World Politics Review, her analysis has featured in The New York Times, Financial Times, Time, CNN, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. An award-winning investigative journalist, she was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team at The Washington Post that covered the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. A native of Chicago, she started her journalism career as a cub reporter for The New York Daily News where her second day on the job was spent covering the 9/11 attacks on New York. Her other reporting stints included The St. Petersburg Times, The New York Observer and The Village Voice. She holds a B.A. in Russian area studies from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A. in journalism from New York University, and an M.P.P. in public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.