What is the Wagner Group and What is it For?
The Wagner Group – ostensibly a private military company financed by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin – has become one of the most discussed features of Russia’s expanding global ambitions. From Ukraine to Mali, Wagner fighters have backstopped the Russian military, guarded critical infrastructure, and served as emissaries of the Russian state to war-torn and embattled governments around the world. Yet, much of the standard narrative surrounding the Wagner Group is wrong, and deliberately so. Drawing on years of research and reporting, as well as analysis of large-scale social media data, Professor Rondeaux will trace the origins of the Wagner Group in Russia’s spetsnaz and soldier-of-fortune community, how the Wagner smokescreen emerged, and what we know about how Wagner operates today.
About the Speaker:
Candace Rondeaux directs Future Frontlines, a public intelligence service for next generation security and democratic resilience. A journalist and public policy analyst, she is a Professor of Practice and Fellow at the Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies and the Center on the Future of War at Arizona State University. Before joining New America, Rondeaux served as a senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace where she launched the RESOLVE Network, a global research consortium on conflict and violent extremism, and as a strategic advisor to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. She has documented and analysed political violence around the world for the Washington Post and the International Crisis Group. Before going abroad for the Post in 2009, Rondeaux covered criminal justice in Maryland and Virginia, where she was part of the Pulitzer Prize winning team of Post reporters who covered the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.
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