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).
Controversy surrounding the Lviv pogroms of 1941
In November 2007 the then President Viktor Yushchenko's visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Government minister Tommy Lapid approached him voicing his disapproval of awarding Roman Shukhevych with Ukraine's highest title of "Hero of Ukraine," stating that Shukhevych had taken part in the Lviv pogroms as commander of the Nachtigall Battalion. Yushchenko replied: "No archives today can confirm any action of a punitive nature, in which soldiers of the UPA and other similar organizations took part", and stated that he was confident about it. At a foreign policy forum in Jerusalem, Yushchenko defended the award of Hero of Ukraine given posthumously to Roman Shukhevych for his role in fighting for Ukraine's independence. Addressing the charges from Holocaust researchers that Nachtigall took part in anti-Jewish atrocities in Lviv in June–July 1941, Yushchenko replied: "I have materials, documents, saying that in the course of grander context of Ukrainian rebellion, Shukhevych signed a petition that prohibited massive persecutions (of civilians)." During Yushchenko 's visit to Israel, he and the Israeli President Shimon Peres agreed to form a joint Israeli-Ukrainian working group to study their common history, including Shukhevych's role in it.