Nikita Dragovich

"He has no fear. No conscience. No weakness."

- Robert McNamara.

Major General Nikita Dragovich (Russian: Никита Драгович) is the primary antagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops. He was born on August 10th1914, in the city of Tsaritsyn in the Russian Empire, then renamed Stalingrad during the Soviet era and later Volgograd, which is still its name today. He is first seen in the level "Operation 40." Dragovich is responsible for brainwashing Mason during his captivity in Vorkuta. He also betrays and murders Dimitri Petrenko and most of his squad during a Nova-6 test.

He is voiced by Eamon Hunt.

Biography
A charismatically soft-spoken opportunist and sinister manipulator, Major General Nikita Dragovich advanced himself through the ranks in the Red Army, amongst the chaos during the Siege of Stalingrad, leaving his men to their fate wasn't an uncommon practice to him. It was there that Viktor Reznov learned that Dragovich was not to be trusted, for he had made promises of reinforcements, but broke them. This most likely set the stage for Vendetta mission in Call of Duty:World at War.

1945, Arctic Circle
thumb|300px|right|Young Dragovich in the mission "Project Nova"After the war, Dragovich was in charge of interrogating German POWs, and from one he learned about the Nazi's failed attempt to use V2 rockets with Nova 6 warheads to strike the US and Russia. He, along with Lev Kravchenko, his right hand man, "volunteered" for the Soviet's Operation Olympus: To capture Friedrich Steiner and bring him and Nova-6 back to Russia. Dragovich led a group of Russians commanded by Captain Viktor Reznov, along with Dimitri Petrenko. They were ordered to capture Steiner in a Nazi holdout in the Arctic Circle. Later on, they found Steiner sitting around, waiting to be taken by Dragovich. They discussed about Project Nova while journeying inside the ship that contained the chemical and the V2 rockets. When they found the weapon, Dragovich decided to test the weapon on Reznov's squad. Petrenko and his men died from the gas. Before Reznov could share the same fate, British commandos attacked the site to take the weapon shipment. However, the shipment was destroyed by Reznov. Dragovich, though without his own sample of Nova-6, still had Steiner, the scientist who invented Nova 6, meaning the weapon could be remade.



1961, capture of Alex Mason
During the next 16 years Dragovich climbed through the ranks of the KGB and ultimately became one of the most powerful men in the Soviet Union, with its entire military seemingly at his disposal. In 1961 Dragovich revealed to be working with Fidel Castro, securing an alliance with the Cuban Government to allow Dragovich to operate in Cuban borders. During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation 40, a CIA led assassination team was ordered to assassinate Castro. However, during the evacuation, Dragovich captured Alex Mason.

Between 61 and 63
Later he brought Mason to Vorkuta, a brutal Russian labor camp. Steiner had implanted Mason with number sequences to translate the number codes necessary to receive instructions as Dragovich's sleeper agent; Dragovich also tried to brainwash Mason to kill current President of the USA, John.F. Kennedy however that was with little success. He considered the brainwashing of Alex Mason a failure, and decided to let Mason rot in Vorkuta, but Reznov, who also an inmate of Vorkuta, used his friendship with Mason to sabotage the brainwashing by implanting new targets to kill: Dragovich, Kravchenko and Steiner, in retaliation for all the wrong they had done to him.

1963, Vorkuta prison break
Two years since Mason was captured, Reznov planned and executed the massive Vorkuta riot. Mason had escaped from his captors while Reznov was surrounded and supposedly killed.

Death?
About a month after the Vorkuta escape, Dragovich oversaw the launch of two Soyuz rockets as part of the Soviet Missile Program in Baikonur. He took Kravchenko with him to watch the project. However, Operation 40 planted a double agent working with the Ascension Group named Grigori Weaver to help out with X-Ray and Whiskey Teams. Weaver however was discovered and Dragovich ordered Kravchenko to "take care of him". Kravchenko stabbed Weaver in the eye with a knife, causing him to lose his eye. X-Ray hunted down and rescued Weaver, who despite the injuries he obtained, was able to continue on with the mission. Mason, Woods and Weaver sabotaged Soyuz Two in time. They then hunted down the Ascension Group: composed of Nazis' and Soviet scientists. Kravchenko left the base in his private Mi-8 assault helicopter while Dragovich appeared to have tried leaving in his private limousine. Mason's team chased and destroyed the limousine, assumed to have killed him. Mason, however, had the feeling that Dragovich was not present in the limousine, which later turned out to be correct.

After 1963
Dragovich had survived the event's of Operation Flashpoint and continued his plan to attack America.

1966, Betrayal of Clarke
With the dossiers recovered from a Soviet defector, Dragovich's plan began to unravel: SOG first learned about Daniel Clarke, a rogue chemist, and Friedrich Steiner, the former SS scientist. Both of which played major parts in the construction of Nova-6. With the improved and weaponized Nova-6 complete, Dragovich had begun burying everything and everyone connected to Nova-6, including Clarke and Steiner. Clarke knew and ran, and proceeded to hide in Kowloon.

1968, Kowloon
Mason's new CIA handler, Jason Hudson and Weaver, who had recovered from his injury, found him and interrogated him. From Clarke Hudson first learned about Nova 6, Clarke's role in perfecting it and one of Dragovich's bases: Mount Yamantau, the Ural Mountains in Russia. However, Spetsnaz operatives discovered their positions attempted to kill the trio. Despite Clarke's seemingly masterful escape plan, he was killed by a headshot from a sniper.

The Vietnam War


It was also discovered by SOG that Kravchenko had been operating in Vietnam and they were told to hunt down and kill him. But it is revealed that he is operating in Laos. A Soviet cargo plane thought to contain Nova-6 was shot down by the CIA, and a SOG team comprised of Mason, Woods, Bowman and Reznov, were ordered to recover it. They reached the wreckage after fighting enemy resistance only to find Nova-6 was released after the crash. They found a map for Kravchenko's compound but Soviet forces had arrived on the ground below. The SOG team fought them from the wreckage, but the Soviet forces called in a Hind attack helicopter for support, which decimated the wreckage. The plane collapsed and fell from a cliff. Mason, along with the team, were found by Dragovich and Kravchenko soon after, with the result that all of them were captured by the Soviet forces.

Betrayal of Steiner
Meanwhile, in the Ural Mountains, Hudson, Weaver, Harris and Brooks were tasked to find the base supposedly containing the evidence that Nova 6 was weaponized. When they reached it however, the base was at the final preparation for demolition, and Steiner contacted the squad, informing them that he would be killed by Dragovich as he is nearly finished burying everything connected to Nova 6. He told them he was at Rebirth Island, and proposed a deal for his safety, in exchange Steiner would reveal to them how to stop Dragovich's plan on using Nova-6 to attack the US, which was a mere 36 hours away.

Rebirth Island
Dragovich's men later released Nova-6 on Rebirth Island, causing CIA and Marine forces to fight in hazmat suits against the Spetsnaz. But the CIA were too late to get Steiner as Mason, following Reznov's programing, killed Steiner.

Real Death
In the final mission of the game, Mason and Hudson hunt down Dragovich in the Rusalka in Cuban waters, only to find the Rusalka was just a surface component, the real numbers station was in an underwater base beneath the ship. They fought their way into the base at the same time the attack from the surface was tearing the base apart, causing it to flood and explode bit by bit. After the two split up, Mason finds Dragovich's control point on an overhanging platform and prepares to shut it down, but an explosion dislodges him from the platform. Mason grabs onto the edge of the platform just as Dragovich emerges from the smoke. Just when Dragovich moved to kill Mason, Hudson intervened and shot him in the shoulder. While Dragovich was distracted on trying to kill Hudson, Mason grabbed his arm and pulled him over the edge of the platform, dropping both Dragovich and himself onto the ground as water rose up from below. Mason then reprimanded Dragovich for the way he brainwashed him which resulted in the deaths of his SOG colleagues Woods and Bowman. After Mason reprimanded him for trying to make him kill John F. Kennedy, Dragovich responded by saying "Tried?.." Mason then choked him to death under the water. While the player is swimming to the ocean's surface immediately after killing Dragovich, Reznov's voice is heard, congratulating Mason for doing what he himself could not.

Trivia

 * Dragovich was born six days after the start of World War I.
 * In Project Nova many of the russian soldiers have the same character build as Dragovich.
 * In all missions Dragovich is seen in except for Project Nova, he is always wearing a leather jacket, a turtle neck, and cargo trousers.
 * Dragovich (when seen) is usually with Kravchenko.
 * Dragovich is never heard from in Call of Duty: World at War although Reznov says he made fake promises of sending more men to assist him in Stalingrad. Reznov's squad may be the men who were killed in the fountain during the mission Vendetta.
 * In the classified documents he is listed as 6'5 and 180 lbs with an "average" build which is abnormal because he looks about the same size as his right hand man, Kravchenko who is 6'0.
 * The protagonists in Black Ops have different ways of pronouncing Dragovich's name. Some, such as Robert McNamara, stress the second syllable, while others, such as Alex Mason, stress the first.
 * Nikita Dragovich was #7 on Game Informer's list of Top 10 Villains of 2010.
 * He dies in a similar fashion to the two main antagonists from two other COD games: Imran Zakhaev from Modern Warfare and General Sheperd from Modern Warfare 2:
 * They are all encountered by the player at the very end of the last mission of the game: Game Over, Endgame, and Redemption
 * They all stand over the protagonist (whom is always injured in some way): Soap and Mason
 * They all carry a pistol which they plan to kill the player with: Desert Eagle, .44 Magnum, and a CZ75
 * They are distracted by an ally (or allies) to the player before they can carry out the act :loyalists, Price, and Hudson
 * They are distracted from the player whom then takes an opportunity to kill them with a relatively simple weapon: an M1911 pistol, a Throwing Knife or strangling them to death with their hands
 * Killing them is the final act the player does in the game.
 * Afterwards the player is mended to (or greeted) by a (Russian) ally: Kamarov, Nikolai, and Weaver
 * He is the first character to hold the role of a central antagonist in a COD game outside the Modern Warfare franchise

Quotes
"You should have been my finest agent! It would all have been so much simpler!"

- Nikita Dragovich to Mason in Redemption.

"He will know suffering beyond his darkest fears.... I have plans for you, American."

- Dragovich in Operation 40.

"Put aside your petty rivalry, Kravchenko. Captain Reznov will do as he is told. We are here for one German and one German only, Doctor Friedrich Steiner. This man has offered his cooperation to our cause. He is not to be harmed. Disobey this order, and you will be shot."

- Dragovich to his troops in Project Nova.

"It's been too long Mason. We must make up for lost times."

- Dragovich to Mason at the end of Crash Site.

"Tried?"

- To Alex Mason when Mason accused him of attempting to program him to kill President Kennedy, and also Dragovich's last words.

"If he does not follow the orders embedded on the Number sequences, then he is of no use to me. He can rot... Take him back to his cell."

- Dragovich to Steiner and Kravchenko in Revelations.

"Doctor Steiner, tell me more about your association with the Giftiger-Sturm project."

- Dragovich in Project Nova.

"Hmm, ambitious and commendable, Herr Steiner."

- Dragovich in Project Nova, upon hearing about the Nazi's plan.

"Our plan to strike at the very heart of the West is now in motion."

- Dragovich in Redemption