Victor Zakhaev (Reboot)

For the original character, see Victor Zakhaev.

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Price: "I almost buried him in Pripyat... With MacMillan."

Laswell: "That was the father. This is the son, Victor."

Price: "Lovely family..."

— Price and Laswell discussing about Zakhaev.

Victor Zakhaev (Russian: Виктор Захаев), also known as Mr. Z, is a character featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and the secondary antagonist in the Special Ops mode.

Biography

Born in the 1970s, Victor Zakhaev was the middle son of Imran Zakhaev, a high-ranking official in the Interior Ministry of the Soviet Union. Victor's childhood coincided with a series of monumental political changes to his country. The introduction of new economic and cultural freedoms crippled the USSR as a major world power, much to Imran's dismay. As a child, Victor had a rare access to the to the tunnels and bunker systems of the Eastern Bloc, thanks to his father.

Loving, but also fearing his father, Victor had to learn to speak Italian, German, English and French. At the age of 16, he was enrolled into a prestigious preparatory school in Verdansk but was expelled soon after following an altercation with a teacher for grabbing the teacher's cane and breaking it to evade his corporal punishment. As punishment, Victor was sent to the Suvo Military School, where his peers were the more austere families of Soviet military personnel.

Victor graduated with the qualification of paratrooper, serving in the last unit of the Soviet Airborne Troops. In 1990, he was deployed to Tajikistan as part of a peacekeeping force to ebb the ethnic clashes that would lead to a string of civil wars activated by the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Deputized by his father, Victor Zakhaev emerged as a leading advocate for the reclamation of mother Russia following the spreading of privatizations and ownership of former state enterprises. Living somewhere beneath the wing and under the shadow of his power-wielding father, Victor assumed some of his father's duties after he received a heart surgery in 1994. Victor joined the most secret division of the Federal Security Service, fighting terrorism and organized crime in Chechnya and beyond.

After the death of Imran Zakhaev in 2011, Victor's growing disenchantment with Modern Russia led him to sneaking out of the country along with his wife Yuila. It was then that he saw the potential in trafficking weapons to former Soviet nations that had descended into ongoing chaos in the wake of the power vacuums brought about by their budding independence.

Victor Zakhaev reportedly used what was left of his father’s loyalist contacts and created Zakhaev Arms to smuggle weapons from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East. Using his gun-running, Victor continued to wield influence with an eye toward fulfilling his father’s unrealized dreams of returning the Soviet Union to its former glory through leveraging the threat of nuclear war.

In November 2019, following the death of General Roman Barkov, Captain John Price held a meeting with Kate Laswell where she informed him about Zakhaev's intention to get Barkov's throne. Price assumed that it was his father, whom he almost killed during a mission in Pripyat with MacMillan, another SAS operative. Laswell, however, revealed it's actually Victor Zakhaev. Victor became a big fan of Hadir Karim's actions and would help him escape from Russian custody.

Following the death of Al-Qatala's leader, Omar "The Wolf" Sulaman, Victor Zakhaev freed Khaled Al-Asad from his prison. Al-Asad seized command authority over the extremist group and founded Al-Qatala-Aljahdid. Zakhaev then forged an alliance with Al-Asad and became an adviser and arms supplier for the new Al-Qatala leader. On March 3rd, 2020, using Zakhaev's armaments, Al-Asad launched a full-scale assault against the city of Verdansk resulting in countless deaths and ultimately the mass evacuation of the city’s civilian occupants.

Gallery

Portrait of Victor Zakhaev in a call with Khaled Al-Asad.

Picture of Imran Zakhaev from Modern Warfare Remastered used to depict Mr. Z

Trivia

• Victor Zakhaev has a past with the Spetsnaz Operator Nikto, having personally tortured him and leaving permanent damage.
• Victor Zakhaev was depicted as "Mr. Z" in the Special Ops mode using a picture of Imran Zakhaev from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered.
• Victor Zakhaev's outfit is identical to that of Chimera operator Yegor.