Yuri (Modern Warfare)

Yuri (Russian: Юрий) was a Russian Loyalist and the main playable character in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. He was an ex-Spetsnaz operative who served in Nikolai's Loyalist Army, and was considered to be his best man. He played an important role during the Ultranationalist crisis before, during, and after World War III. He was also a close friend of Vladimir Makarov while serving in the Ultranationalists. Both of them saved Imran Zakhaev's life in Chernobyl in 1996 and were present during the bomb detonation that killed 30,000 marines. After he left Makarov during the airport massacre, he served with the Loyalists and Task Force 141 disavowed soldiers John Price and John "Soap" MacTavish. However Yuri was killed by Makarov in a joined effort between Price and him to kill the Russian to avenge Soap's death.

Early life
"I was young... and patriotic... when I first met Vladimir Makarov..."

- Yuri, about his past as a former Ultranationalist. Not much was known about Yuri until the revelations in Prague. It is known that Yuri served in the Spetsnaz and was (as he described himself at the time) "young and patriotic" during the 1990s. His idealism caught the interest of Imran Zakhaev and Vladimir Makarov, eventually befriending the latter. Yuri served in the Ultranationalist party primarily escorting Makarov throughout the crisis. In 1996, Yuri and Makarov were in one of the vehicles during Zakhaev's attempted arms deal exchange in Pripyat, Ukraine. After Lieutenant John Price's assassination attempt on Zakhaev, Yuri and Makarov helped escort Zakhaev after his left arm was dismembered. Nearly 15 years later, during Khaled Al-Asad's coup d'état in the Middle East, Yuri was standing next to Makarov when he detonated the nuclear device on Al-Asad's orders to level the city, killing close to thirty thousand U.S. Marines. However, the events Yuri had experienced made him uneasy about his affiliation with the Ultranationalists.

Defection and Going into Hiding
"I know what you have done, Yuri. I know what you have told them. My friend. My ally. My betrayer. What happens here today, will change the world forever. Nothing can stop this. Not even you."

- Makarov confronts Yuri about betraying him before the massacre at the Zakhaev International Airport.

When Yuri had learned of Makarov's plans to conduct a massacre at the Zakhaev International Airport, Yuri had attempted to stop it, alerting the FSB and possibly assisting Joseph Allen's undercover operation. However, Makarov had learned of Yuri's betrayal and shoots him in the process, leaving him for dead. A wounded Yuri attempts to pursue Makarov's team and intervene, but passes out from blood loss, being treated by paramedics that arrived on the scene. This event alone drove Yuri to have a strong hatred of Makarov and contributed to Yuri joining the Loyalists in Modern Warfare 3.

Pursuing Makarov
After Price, Soap, and Nikolai arrive at the Loyalist safehouse in Himachal Pradesh, India, Yuri was introduced to Price under dangerous circumstances. Soap was badly wounded and needed evacuation from the safehouse after Makarov's men launch an attack on the safehouse. Yuri aids Price and Nikolai in treating Soap's injuries, as well as facilitating their extraction out of the country. Having knowledge of Makarov's patterns, but not revealing his true nature to the pair, Yuri would point out possible locations Makarov would go to, mainly the location of Makarov's arms deals in Sierra Leone, as well as speculating Makarov's security detail. Yuri helped facilitate the relaying of intelligence acquired from his missions with Soap and Price to their allies until getting their lead on his location in Prague.

Revelations
"Zakhaev never forgot what we did for him that day. Our reward was power, but power corrupts. Thousands of souls...extinguished...by the push of a button. This wasn't war, it was madness! I was a soldier of Russia, not a taker of innocent lives! But in his eyes, this marked me as the enemy."

- Yuri tells Price about his relationship with Makarov in "Blood Brothers".

Acting on intelligence given by Team Metal, Price, Soap, Yuri, and Sgt. Kamarov organize a local resistance to facilitate their infiltration for Hotel Lustig. Yuri spent the majority of the mission partnered up with Soap, providing support for Price in the cover of a church overlooking the Hotel Lustig. However, the assassination mission goes south, with Makarov having suspected Yuri's presence (mainly because Soap saw Makarov looking right at him.) Makarov says to Yuri over the radio uplink, "Yuri, my friend, you never should have come here," before detonating bombs on Price, Soap, and Yuri. Soap pushes Yuri out of a window to save him, and Soap caught on to Makarov's knowledge of Yuri. Yuri aids Price in rushing Soap to a nearby building, only for Soap to reveal Makarov's knowledge of Yuri to Price seconds before his death. Enraged, Price punches Yuri down a flight of stairs and threatens to kill him, before Yuri reveals his former allegiance to the Ultranationalists. Yuri and Makarov were both close friends and witnesses to the assassination attempt on Imran Zakhaev and the nuclear bomb in Al-Asad's capital city. Immediately before the Zakhaev International Airport massacre, Makarov had Yuri at his mercy after discovering that Yuri, who did not believe in the mission, had betrayed them. Makarov shot Yuri and left him to die, and a wounded Yuri pursued Makarov and his cohorts with a dead guards P99 before collapsing from trauma and blood loss, and a nearby medic was able to save him. Convinced of his regret, Price reluctantly keeps his alliance with Yuri.

Redemption
Yuri gives Price the location of a potential headquarters located in a fortress in Prague. However, during their infiltration, they instead find intelligence that Makarov's men found Russian President Boris Vorshevsky's daughter, Alena, hiding in Berlin. The pair relay the intelligence to Team Metal shortly after the base's destruction. Despite Team Metal's efforts, Alena was kidnapped and tracked to a diamond mine in Siberia, which was serving as one of Makarov's main tactical bases. At this point, Price and Yuri conduct a joint operation with Team Metal in saving the Vorshevskys. They are successful in the extraction, but Team Metal perishes in the process from the collapsing of a mine, facilitating a wounded Yuri's extraction. Despite this, Yuri and Price's efforts have ensured peace talks between the United States, Russia and NATO.

Death
Despite the end of the war, Yuri accompanies Price in the Arabian Peninsula after having successfully tracked down Makarov in the Hotel Oasis. Yuri gets wounded by a piece of re-bar when a helicopter obliterates part of the hotel, telling Price to continue the mission without him. Yuri manages to free himself and is just in time to save Price from Makarov's execution by shooting Makarov's left shoulder. Yuri is then shot on both his shoulders and then a lethal shot to the head by his old friend Makarov, thus killing him. However, Yuri's death buys Price much needed time to kill Makarov.

Trivia

 * He is one of the few playable characters in the Modern Warfare series to have a visible body. Others include Soap, Burns, Captain Price and Frost, with the exception of Roach in Operation Kingfish.
 * In Soap's Journal it says that Yuri and Nikolai "go way back." However, Yuri had only vacated the Inner Circle at the same day as the airport attack which is only days before the entry could have been written unless the association began between the massacre and 2011 where Yuri began expressing doubt about Makarov's intentions.
 * In "Persona Non Grata" when the player takes control of the UGV, the player can see Yuri on the laptop. The model for Yuri is not the one seen in "Dust to Dust", but is instead Kamarov from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. On the Wii version however, it is Yuri's model from "Dust to Dust".
 * Yuri is the first Russian playable character in the Modern Warfare series, followed by Andrei Harkov.
 * Early concept art of Yuri showed him older looking with light gray hair and more muscular.
 * The concept art version of Yuri resembles actor.
 * Yuri is the eleventh playable character to die in the series.
 * In the Modern Warfare series, Yuri is the second playable character to die as an NPC, the first being Soap. However, he is the third if counting the Black Ops timeline, as then the first would be Dimitri Petrenko and Soap would come second.
 * He is the first playable character in the series to have only his first name revealed.
 * He is the last man to be killed by Makarov before his own death.
 * Interestingly, if you go into third-person through console commands (see below), Yuri has a head model, probably because of his model from Dust To Dust. This is strange, as Alex Mason from Black Ops had such, yet appeared headless in third person.
 * Yuri is only playable in the Task Force missions where they are labeled "Disavowed". Dust to Dust is the first and only Task Force mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 that doesn't have this label, and the player controls Price instead.
 * He is also the first playable character, at least in the Modern Warfare series, to be a defector.
 * During the flashback to "No Russian", more of Yuri's tattoos can be seen. They go all the way onto his hands, which are covered by gloves in all the Task Force 141 missions.
 * Yuri looks a lot like his voice actor Brian Bloom, who played Pike in The A-Team movie.
 * He is the third playable character to be heavily tattooed after Joseph Allen and Danny Trejo.
 * Yuri is one of the four playable characters to encounter Vladimir Makarov face-to-face, and chronologically the first.
 * Yuri's usual handgun was always Desert Eagle except in two missions, "Eye of The Storm" where he uses a USP.45 and "Stronghold" where he uses a P99.
 * It is unknown how Yuri managed to recover in just 5 days after "No Russian" since he suffered large amount of blood loss and wounds from gunshot.
 * It is strange that how Nikolai managed to trust Yuri as commander of the Loyalists in just a short time after Yuri's betrayal. It is possible that Nikolai and Yuri were close friends when Nikolai still held his position as an Ultranationalist informant back in 2011 before being exposed and captured.

Quotes
Юрий