The Chechen Republic’s Minister for National Policy, External Relations, Press and Information, Akhmed Dudaev, together with the region’s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, have sharply criticised Russian singer Alla Pugachyova after her comments about the first president of the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzhokhar Dudaev.
The trigger was Pugachyova’s words in an interview with journalist Yekaterina Gordeeva, published on 10 September. In the conversation, the singer said she personally knew Dzhokhar Dudaev and described him as a decent, respectable, intelligent, and handsome man.
‘The first Chechen war particularly stuck in my mind because I knew Dzhokhar Dudaev. He was such a decent, respectable, intelligent man — a handsome man. And his wife! What a wife: an artist, a writer, a politician,’ said Pugachyova.
The artist also admitted she felt guilt towards Dudaev’s widow, Alla, whom she was unable to help at a difficult time.
Minister Akhmed Dudaev (no relation to Dzhokhar Dudaev) responded to Pugacheva’s words in a video message, saying that the singer and other ‘provocateurs who fled Russia’ would, in his view, ‘be held accountable for every word’.
‘By making such statements and glorifying such a terrorist, Alla Pugachyova insults the memory of all 300,000 people who died [appearing to refer to a higher-end estimate of casualties in the two Chechen wars]. She insults the entire Chechen people. Alla Pugachyova and other provocateurs, the rats who fled our country, will be held accountable for every word. History will judge them. They will have to answer before the memory of the dead and before the people they insult’, said Dudaev.
He also claimed that Pugachyova and her supporters had allegedly expected Russia’s defeat in its confrontation with the West. ‘They predicted that the country’s economy would collapse, that the state would disintegrate. They fled the country like rats from a sinking ship. But, as it turned out, the ship is not sinking but, on the contrary, gathering speed,’ the minister added.
Criticism also came from the Chechen Head Ramzan Kadyrov, who called Pugachyova an ‘enemy of the people and a traitor’.
‘Alla Pugachyova makes foolish reflections on the most difficult period for the Chechen people. Dzhokhar Dudaev was a poser and treated the problems of Chechens with disdain. The war was started by the same sort of traitors as [the late Russian oligarch Boris] Berezovsky and Pugachyova,’ said Kadyrov.
Kadyrov accused Pugachyova of justifying the ‘actions of a terrorist’, while he himself blamed Dudaev for the deaths of tens of thousands of Chechens.
The singer’s remarks also prompted a lawsuit. Lawyer Aleksandr Treshchyov, who describes himself as a veteran of the Afghan war and frequently appears on federal television talk shows, filed a complaint with the court for ‘insulting combat veterans’. He said Pugachyova’s words had personally offended him.
According to the state-run Russian media outlet RT, the lawsuit has not yet been accepted for consideration. The lawyer stated that if he received compensation, he intended to use it to support veterans.
Earlier, pro-Kremlin political analysts had drawn attention to Pugachyova’s words. They called for a criminal case under the article on justification of terrorism, which entails inclusion in the Russian financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring’s list of extremists and terrorists.
The Kremlin has not commented on Pugachyova’s interview.
In 2015, Kadyrov called Pugachyova ‘beloved by all’ and cited her marriage to Maksim Galkin as an example. However, after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the singer and her husband left Russia. In 2022, Galkin himself was added to the list of ‘foreign agents’.
Pugachyova’s interview with Yekaterina Gordeeva on YouTube has gathered millions of views.
Elizaveta Chukharova
