Alexander Lebed

Lieutenant General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed (Russian: Александр Иванович Лебедь; 20 April 1950 – 28 April 2002) was a Soviet and Russian military officer and politician who held senior positions in the Airborne Forces before running for president in the 1996 Russian presidential election. He did not win, but placed third behind incumbent Boris Yeltsin and the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, with roughly 14% of the vote nation-wide. Lebed later served as the Secretary of the Security Council in the Yeltsin administration, and eventually became the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, the second largest Russian region. He served four years in the latter position, until his death following an Mi-8 helicopter crash.

He participated in most of Russia's military conflicts in the final decade of the Soviet Union, including the Soviet–Afghan War. From 1988 until 1991, General Lebed served as the commander of the 106th Guards Airborne Division, and later became the deputy head of the Russian Airborne Troops. The general also played a key role in the Transnistrian War between Transnistrian separatists and the Moldovan government in 1992 as the commander of the Russian 14th Guards Army, which intervened in favor of the former and occupied the region. Popular among the army, when he resigned his commission in 1995 to enter politics, Lebed was also regarded as being charismatic by the public, in contrast to other Russian politicians in the 1990s, with polls showing his popularity being ahead of Yeltsin's for some time. As the Secretary of the Security Council in the president's administration after the 1996 election he also led the negotiations that ended the First Chechen War.