Sergei Kovalev

A biologist who served ten years in Soviet camps and exile for documenting human rights abuses, Kovalev became a Yeltsin ally after 1991 and Russia's first human rights commissioner. When Yeltsin sent the army into Chechnya in December 1994, Kovalev went to Grozny, stayed through the bombardment and reported civilian deaths to Russian and foreign media. The Duma removed him as commissioner in 1995, and in 1996 he resigned from Yeltsin's human rights commission with an open letter accusing the president of abandoning democracy. He later opposed Putin's Chechen war on the same grounds.