Yemelyan Pugachev
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev () (c. 1742 – ) was a Russian Cossack who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine the Great, claiming to be her late husband, Emperor Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote a notable history of the rebellion, "The History of Pugachev", and he recounted some of the events in his novel "The Captain's Daughter" (1836).
Shamil Basayev
According to Alexander Litvinenko's book "Death of a Dissident", Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky said that he had a conversation with the Chechen Islamist leader Movladi Udugov in 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of the phone conversation between Berezovsky and Udugov was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on 10 September 1999. Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish new Islamic republic of Basayev-Udugov that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but "Udugov and Basayev conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war." However, Litvinenko and Berezovsky provided little evidence for their claims. Researcher Henry Plater-Zyberk has described Litvinenko as "a one man disinformation bureau" who was hungry for attention and provided little, if any, evidence for his claims.