Happy Friday!
I was missing from your inbox last week because I had too much to do and not enough time to do it. I hope you missed me (if not, why not?!). And, to be honest, sometimes I struggle for an idea that I think is worth your time. But, this week at the eleventh hour, I’ve got a small idea I want to explore: The apparently declining media profile of Apti Alaudinov.
With that in mind, here’s what you can expect this week:
- A fading media star?
- Limited evidence to support a hypothesis
- What we can (and can’t) read into Alaudinov’s prominence
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A fading media star?
Apti Alaudinov is the commander of Spetsnaz Akhmat, the “volunteer” unit that has served as the main vehicle for Chechen involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine. The role has served him well, offering a path to redemption for a previously disgraced official. Through frequent media appearances and not inconsiderable efforts at self-promotion, Alaudinov has become one of the faces of the war.
In recent months, however, I’ve had the distinct impression that there has been less Alaudinov to go round. Not in terms of reduced activity on his Telegram channel, where his love for himself appears largely undiminished. But in terms of coverage by mainstream media outlets. Sometimes a person can appear to be everywhere, with every mundane utterance (and Alaudinov’s utterances are usually mundane) picked up by publication after publication. Last year, Alaudinov felt like one of those people. Of late, though, he has appeared to be a much more marginal media figure.
Limited evidence to support a hypothesis
To test whether there is any merit to this general feeling, I decided to look at how often he is mentioned by major Russian media outlets. And this appears to offer preliminary support for the hypothesis.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official state newspaper, mentioned Alaudinov 38 times between 22 February 2022 and the end of the year, 134 times throughout 2023, and 377 times in 2024. Thus far in 2025, however, it has mentioned him just once.
The same is true for Izvestia, where the figures stand at 71, 99, 137, and 18 for the respective time periods. Kommersant’s coverage changes are less pronounced, but there is nevertheless a drop this year compared to last: 10, 56, 173, and 60. The print editions of both newspapers have also mentioned him less in 2025 compared to 2024: two compared to nine for Izvestiya and zero compared to two for Kommersant.
What about television? The website of Channel One shows only one mention in 2022 and zero in 2023, but 40 in 2024. Thus far in 2025, the figure stands at a lowly four.
In short, Alaudinov does appear to have become much less prominent in mainstream media in 2025 compared to 2024.
What we can (and can’t) read into Alaudinov’s prominence
To be clear, these figures are not the fruits of a robust study. I have not looked at the substance of the coverage, nor have I filtered out false positives (though Alaudinov is not that common a name, so the distortions are fewer than they would be for some other characters). It is a bit more weighty than the gut feeling I started with, but not a whole lot more.
Nevertheless, if they are reflective and Alaudinov’s media profile has indeed declined, is there anything we can learn from this? After all, media signalling does play an important role in both Russian and Chechen politics. Alaudinov’s own previous fall from grace provides just one example: he completely disappeared from Chechen state and social media, becoming, in a relatively short period, effectively a non-person. The change in prominence was as pronounced as the infamous photo of Stalin and Nikolay Yezhov, from which the latter was not-too-subtly removed.
As far as the Chechen succession question is concerned, I think it tells us very little about Alaudinov’s chances of replacing ailing leader Ramzan Kadyrov. On the one hand, Alaudinov is an outside candidate at best: He lacks networks within Chechnya and is no longer a trusted regime insider. On the other hand, Magomed Daudov — a much more plausible placeholder until the Kadyrov children are old enough to assume formal power — doesn’t have much of a federal media profile either. At the end of the day, the Russian federal media offers only limited insights into internal Chechen politics and processes.
What I think it instead points to is the impermanence of wartime stardom in Russia. Individuals come to the fore for a short period and have an outsized impression on the narratives of conflict. This leads people to form distorted impressions of their influence over underlying processes. Alaudinov is one such figure, Prigozhin arguably another. Go back through the various phases of Russia’s war and other potential candidates spring to mind: Girkin, Khodakovsky, Zakharchenko.
Such figures are not irrelevant. But, over time, their star fades, they move into the background (or are removed from the scene), and the processes that they once seemed deeply involved in continue without them. I suspect much the same will be true for Alaudinov.
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