Lev Kravchenko

"Dragovich's second in command, Kravchenko, tested it in Vietnam. On them, on us, on his own. He didn't care!"

- Mason about Kravchenko on Nova 6.

Lev Kravchenko (Russian: Лев Кравченко) was the secondary antagonist in Call of Duty: Black Ops and appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 as an Easter-Egg. He was Nikita Dragovich's second in command, and he was the reason why the SOG was deployed to Vietnam.

In any other regime, Colonel Kravchenko would've been locked away, if not executed. Often referred to as Dragovich's lap dog, Kravchenko was a cold-hearted sadist made of pure evil. Staying mostly silent, he carried out his master's orders without question. A rumor originating from his village outside of Leningrad tells of Kravchenko's mutilation and murder of his sister Irina, who spurned the romantic advances of his mentor, Dragovich. This act of loyalty, as the rumor goes, led directly to his commission as an officer under Dragovich's command.

Much like Dragovich, Kravchenko detested Viktor Reznov. His reasons however, were much more mundane than those of Dragovich: Kravchenko took his lead wholly from his General.

Kravchenko was a powerful figure of a man, built for war. He was a ruthless and amoral military officer, and had to fulfill his blood-lust no matter the cost. He was aggressive and impatient but not vengeful. He did not see past his next action, and therefore would always be a weapon of war, and not an orchestrator. Kravchenko enjoyed the suffering of others; it is one of the few things that could incite anything resembling a human feeling inside the man.

Kravchenko was killed in Payback when Woods stabbed Kravchenko before he was about to kill Mason. On his last breath, Kravchenko said "You will die with me!" before pulling a string attached to all the grenades on his belt. Thinking fast, Woods tackled Kravchenko out of his office window, apparently sacrificing himself to save Mason. A huge explosion is seen and heard and the player should assume that both Woods and Kravchenko are dead.

Early life
Lev Kravchenko was born on March 22, 1922 in Petrograd, USSR. Not much else is known about his early life.

The Hunt for Steiner
"Ah...The hero of Berlin graces us with his presence. Have you not tired of battle, Reznov?"

- Kravchenko joking with Reznov.

At the end of World War II, Kravchenko and Dragovich seized a Nazi base in the Arctic to rescue a Nazi scientist and have him give Dragovich a weapon of mass destruction called Nova 6. Viktor Reznov and Dimitri Petrenko (World at War main protagonist's) found him and found the ship with Nova 6, but Kravchenko and Dragovich betrayed the other Red army soldiers and murdered Dimitri and almost killed Reznov, but they did not get their hands on Nova 6. Reznov was taken to Vorkuta by Kravchenko shortly after.

Operation 40
Kravchenko made his first appearance in Operation 40. He captured Alex Mason after a failed attempt to kill Castro. It was revealed that Castro was alive and that Dragovich and Castro had joined forces. Kravchenko took Mason to Vorkuta where he would spend the next 2 years.

Baikonur, U.S.S.R.
"Surrender now... and you will be allowed to live."

- Kravchenko asking Mason and Woods to surrender.

After Viktor Reznov gave his life to have Mason escape in a big prison break, Kravchenko was most likely the one who killed him as there is a strong rivalry shown as Dragovich says to put aside their petty rivalry. Later Dragovich and Kravchenko attended the launch of the first Soyuz rocket. The CIA ordered SOG to stop this and eliminate Dragovich. Weaver was at the Cosmodrome, having been planted by the CIA, but Kravchenko discovered him and stabbed his left eye. Kravchenko and Dragovich escaped before Mason, Woods, Bowman, Weaver and Brooks could get to him.

Death
"You will die with me!"

- Kravchenko's last words.

5 years later, Dragovich also joined forces with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army in Vietnam. The SOG tried to find Kravchenko while the CIA searched for Dragovich and Steiner, but were captured. Kravchenko met his end when Mason and Woods attacked him. Woods stabbed him but Kravchenko pulled a grenade around his neck, and Woods was forced to push Kravchenko out off the window where he exploded and killed himself along with Woods.

Trivia

 * Unlockable intel states that a cousin of Kravchenko took part in a massacre at Der Riese. The intel also mentioned that American soldiers went to the factory too, resulting in a standoff with Soviet troops.
 * Andrew Divoff, the voice over of Kravchenko, acted in the series "Lost" as Mikhail Bakunin, a former Soviet communique/medical officer who served in the SAF before being recruited by "the Others". Besides the fact Bakunin was a Soviet soldier, he dies in a similar fashion to Kravchenko: both are pierced by a blade/blade-like object (Kravchenko a knife, Mikhail a spear), and both attempt to take one of the protagonists with them to their deaths by pulling the pin on grenades.
 * He has a similar personality to General Shepherd; both are cold-blooded, calculating, willing to kill their own men for their own causes, both stomp on the player, and both fight an ally to the player in a similar fashion.
 * Andrew Divoff had previously acted with Gary Oldman (the voice over of Reznov) in Air Force One as a similar Russian villain and one of Oldman's character's henchmen who gets his neck snapped during a brawl by Harrison Ford's character. This is ironic as previously, Divoff played one of Oldman's character's henchmen in the film Air Force One, while in the game Black Ops, he voiced a nemesis of Oldman's character Reznov.
 * In the mission "Victor Charlie", Mason refers to Kravchenko as "General Kravchenko", despite his rank to be a Colonel.
 * During the "Project Nova" mission after the player meets Steiner and the player is walking to the large boat, the player can look to their right and see Kravchenko executing soldiers, when he gets to the last soldier his pistol magazine runs out and instead he slits the soldier's throat.
 * In the Wii version of Project Nova, Kravchenko is wearing an ushanka.
 * In the mission "Rebirth" Mason and Reznov are wearing Kravchenko's clothing.
 * It seems that Kravchenko is always loyal to Dragovich, because they have been together since WWII, and Reznov says to Dimitri in "Project Nova": Dragovich and his lap dog Kravchenko.
 * According to the intel unlockable in mission "Crash Site", Kravchenko, under the orders of Dragovich, used the villages in the border regions at Laos for field-testing the Nova 6, and after the tests littered the site with dead SOG operatives to make the carnage appear as if it was work of Americans.
 * Intel during cutscenes states that Kravchenko is 6'0, an inch taller than Mason and Reznov, and 220 pounds, and a "stocky" build.
 * Kravchenko has stepped on Mason nine times: Once in the endings of Crash Site and "Operation 40" and seven times near the end of "Payback".
 * Before the game was released, Kravchenko originally was thought to be the main antagonist and was going to be voiced by MMA fighter and Predators actor Oleg Taktarov but this was before Dragovich existed in the game.
 * Kravchenko is the only colonel in Call of Duty: Black Ops.
 * His face closely resembles Imran Zakhaev's.
 * He is the only character to appear in both Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
 * He is the first character from a Treyarch-created game to appear in an Infinity Ward-created game.
 * Out of the three antagonists in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Kravchenko is the only one not to be killed by Alex Mason.
 * In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, before Price and Yuri set out to kill Makarov, there are pictures of some of the targets earlier in the campaign. If the player looks at the right time, the player will notice Price has a close-up picture of Kravchenko believed to be taken on October 29, 1945.
 * Kravchenko only says nine short lines throughout the game.
 * He and Victor Zakhaev (from Modern Warfare) are the only antagonists in entire Call of Duty series to kill themselves.

Video
Video:"Project Nova" - Gameplay 1

A young Kravchenko in the mission "Project Nova"