Viktor Imranovich Zakhaev (6 August 1971 -), operating as Mr. Z after his faked death, was a Russian arms dealer of Chechen descent, and leader of Zakhaev Arms, al-Qatala sympathizer, the son of Imran Zakhaev, and one of the key members of the Ultranationalist Party. After faking his death and fleeing the country in 2011, he resurfaced in 2020 as one of al-Qatala's funders and the key behind Donetsk's invasion.
Biography[]
Early life[]
Born to Imran Zakhaev, an official in the Interior Ministry of the Soviet Union, Viktor was raised during an era where monumental changes were happening to his homeland. He, along with most of his family, descended from German, Bulgarian, Serbian and Chechen blood. As a child, Viktor explored the tunnels and bunker systems dotting the Eastern Bloc thanks to his father's vast array of assets. He was a polyglot, speaking Russian, English, French, German, and Italian fluently; eventually, he was enrolled in a prestigious boarding school in the Ukrainian SSR.
Viktor was a troublemaker, however, and broke his teacher's cane to avoid punishment. This resulted in his expulsion, which angered his father, who sent him to the Frunze Military Academy as punishment. He graduated as a paratrooper, serving with the VDV in the final years of the USSR. In 1990, Viktor was sent to the Tajik SSR to quell various ethnic clashes that eventually lead to civil war in the wake of the USSR's collapse. In 1991, the USSR was dissolved and the Russian Federation took its place, to his father's dismay.
After the Federation was formed, Viktor was a leading official following the mass privatization and ownership of state enterprises. He assumed a few of his father's duties after his heart surgery in 1994, joining one of the FSB's black ops divisions and fought various terrorist groups, most notably in Chechnya and Syria.
Civil war and near death[]
In 2011, the Second Russian Civil War began, with Viktor defecting from the FSB and joining the Ultranationalist rebels, becoming akin to a field commander. He assisted his father and Khaled al-Asad in the execution of Yasir al-Fulani, a key Saudi Arabian royalist and one of their top men.
Viktor was discovered to operate out of Uzlovoy in Krasnodar Krai. That morning, he had a moment of clairvoyance and sent a double to take his place during a routine patrol out of suspicion. After staying hidden nearby and witnessing Borisovich commit suicide in front of SAS Captain John Price's team, he quickly fled the country with his family.
This pained him greatly, as he knew this would result in severe consequences for his father and the rest of the world, but Viktor's survival instincts couldn't let him stay in Russia. Nevertheless, he became an arms dealer in Eastern Europe under the name of Mr. Z.
Zakhaev Arms[]
As Mr. Z, he formed Zakhaev Arms from his father's remaining contacts in the chaos of World War III, staying under the radar of both sides of the war; even the mastermind of the war - Vladimir Makarov - believed Zakhaev to be dead. He smuggled arms from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East, gaining immense amounts of monetary gain and power from this.
Zakhaev would eventually discover an FSB deep cover spy among his smuggling ring in 2018 and tortured him to the point that he was unrecognizable; this served as a message to anyone who would try to infiltrate his ranks.
He aligned with al-Qatala and sought their assistance in restoring the Soviet Union once again. After General Roman Barkov's death on 3 November 2019, Mr. Z saw his opportunity and freed the imprisoned Khaled al-Asad from a Russian black site and allowed al-Fulani's killer to assume Omar Sulaman's empty throne. Mr. Z also sought to free the terrorist Hadir Karim, seeking to recruit him.
Invasion of Donetsk[]
Mr. Z began to openly fund al-Qatala, giving them state-of-the-art military equipment and vehicles. This eventually resulted in the Invasion of Donetsk on 3 March 2020, which killed countless DPR soldiers, civilians, and various Ukrainian Ground Forces and Russian Army soldiers.
The Armistice was formed to combat the resurrected al-Qatala; a combination of NATO forces, Russian military, and mercenary factions. Mr. Z organized several nuclear weapons to be transported to bunkers across Donetsk, which resulted in Armistice sending a strike team to remove a nuclear core from their possession. Though it succeeded, it did not cripple al-Qatala. After weeks of fighting, Mr. Z approved the deployment of chlorine gas to cover their retreat; this caused Armistice operators to fight each other for an extraction out of Donetsk. The only survivor was Simon Riley, also known as "Ghost", who made it his mission to find Mr. Z, revealed to be Viktor Zakhaev instead of his father.
Ghost assisted remaining operators in tracking Zakhaev, but found no leads. However, AQ comm traffic was discovered by Russian forces in the stadium, who sent a reformed Shadow Company to intercept it, breaching the stadium via the roof. Though Shadow Company failed in finding any valuable intel, Ghost continued to supply leads to both sides of the former Armistice. Eventually, Nikolai of Chimera and Farah Karim of FSA were sent to the subway tunnels. Though initially believed to have been using the trams to travel across Donetsk, it was revealed that Zakhaev traveled by foot.
Death[]
During the chaos caused by infighting within the Armistice, Zakhaev was able to power up Bunker 10 and give him access to the ICBM within. Upon realizing he could fulfill what his father failed to do, Viktor attempted to begin the launch towards a Western country. Unfortunately for him, Task Force 141 cracked the abort code and began an assault on the Bunker with the assistance of Karim and Sergeant Marcus Griggs of the Demon Dogs. While the latter distracted his outside forces, Price infiltrated the bunker and shot Zakhaev in the shoulder as he activated the missile, before throwing him to the bottom where he died upon impact. Afterwards, Price would abort the missile and save the world from Armageddon.