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Naida Azizova,  Russia Today Correspondent, born in Makhachkala, USSR.

As a college student Naida studied the History of the Arab World. She holds a MA in Oriental Studies and a PhD in Ethnography and Anthropology from St. Petersburg State University  in Russia. Her thesis was on the Arab component in the culture of the North Caucasus people. Naida also spent a year as a visiting scholar to the University of Oxford (UK), and lectured at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

While starting as a freelancer for RT in 2006, Naida first gained notice for her reports on terrorist activity in Dagestan. A year later she joined the staff as a full-time correspondent. Reporting took her to many conflict zones – Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,  and Nagorno-Karabagh -just to name a few. A twist in her career occurred in August 2008 when Naida was assigned to cover the war in South Ossetia. She brought the first RT report on the event from the region on the spot.

Later on Naida was appointed the chief of RT’s bureau in the Caucasus – the first such bureau ever established by Russian or Western media in Tskhinval, South Ossetia. Though based there she has also been covering Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, and Northern Ossetia and won many exclusives.

Having joinedTV nearly 20 years ago Naida is a journalist with extensive professional experience.Apart from Avar – her native language – and English, she is fluent in Russian and Arabic. Naida also speaks Persian, French and Hebrew.