Movladi Udugov

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 (1962-02-09) 9 February 1962 (age 62)
Germenchuk, Checheno-Ingush ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
NationalityChechen
Political partyNCCP, IU, CPID (currently none)
Alma materGrozny 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]

  1. ^ Elisabeth Smick. Russia's Chechen Resistance, Council on Foreign Relations, July 18, 2006 Archived July 22, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Derluguian, Georgi (1999). "Che Guevaras in turbans". New Left Review. 237: 7.
  3. ^ Fuller, Liz (8 July 2016). "Chechen Leader Demands Turkey Hand Over 'Terrorists'". RFERL.