Movladi Udugov
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Movladi Udugov (Russian: Мовлади Удугов) (born 1962) is one of the main ideologues of the Chechen rebels.
He joined the ruling structures of Ichkeria, as Chechnya's separatists call the republic, back in the early 1990s, serving as propaganda chief in Dzhokhar Dudaev's government [1] . During the 1994-1996 war, while very crude by a Western standards, he put out information about the conflict more professionally than the Kremlin's inept propagandists, winning the propaganda war for Chechens. For this he was often called a "Chechen Goebbels" by a Russian leaders.
Following the First Chechen War, Udugov became a deputy prime minister in the government of Aslan Maskhadov, and went to Moscow on a number of occasions for talks with members of the Security Council and Russian government [1] . He unsuccessfully candidated for a President in the 1997 election campaign, representing an unpopular radical Islamist platform.
[edit] Second Chechen War
At the start of the Second Chechen War in autumn 1999, Udugov left Chechnya, after which he lost practically all of his influence on the Chechen rebel movement. Russian authorities accuse him of being one of the main organizers of the Chechen rebel-led attack on Dagestan in August-September 1999. Udugov is wanted by the Russian federal government since March 20, 2000. He is accused of having violated Article 279 of Russia's Criminal Code, which outlaws "armed uprisings." [1]
In March 1999 Udugov created The Kavkaz Center - Chechen international Islamic Internet agency. Since 2006, following his victory in a dispute with a moderate Chechen exiled leader Akhmed Zakayev, he is once again an official rebel spokesman. His whereabouts remain unknown, he is however believed to live in some Arab country.
Udugov follows a particularly fundamentalist strain of Islam that is not shared by most Chechens. He rejects the proposition of an independent Chechen state in favor of an Islamic state encompassing the entire North Caucasus. [2]
