Movladi Udugov | |
|---|---|
Мовлади Саидарбиевич Удугов | |
| First Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria | |
| In office August 1996 – 2 February 1997 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 9 February 1962 Germenchuk, Checheno-Ingush ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | Chechen |
| Political party | NCCP, IU, CPID (currently none) |
| Alma mater | Grozny State University |
Movladi Saidarbievich Udugov (Chechen: Мовла́ди Саидарби́евич Уду́гов, born 9 February 1962 in Germenchuk, Shalinsky District, Chechnya into the Shirdi teip) is the former First Deputy Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). As a Chechen propaganda chief, he was credited for the Chechens' victory on the information front during the First Chechen War.
A highly-controversial figure, following a particularly fundamentalist strain of Islam that is not shared by most Chechens, he is currently one of the ideologues and the main propagandist behind the Caucasus Emirate (a Pan-Islamic militant movement that is rejecting the idea of a merely independent Chechen state in favor of an Islamic state encompassing most of the Russia's North Caucasus and based on Islamic Sharia law).[1]
Georgi Derluguian has described him as a "wonderfully opportunistic journalist" and an "autodidactic master of Chechen war propaganda" who, outside Islamic sources, also quotes Western authors such as Gramsci and Huntington.[2]
Udugov currently lives in exile in Turkey.[3]