Boris Ryzhkov

Senior Sergeant Boris Borisovich Ryzhkov is a character in The Kremlin Chronicles. He is a member of the 8th Guards Army of the Soviet Armed Forces. While serving as the platoon leader of an infantry unit during the Soviet invasion of West Germany, Ryzhkov proves his skills as a proficient sniper and develops a reputation as a ruthless killer amongst NATO forces and becomes somewhat of a folk hero amongst Eastern Bloc soldiers.
== Biography ==
Boris Ryzhkov is the son of a Russian veteran from the Great Patriotic War and his wife, a Belarusian sharecropper who fled the German invasion in the early 1940s, and died shortly after childbirth. The elder Ryzhkov fought during the Siege of Leningrad for three years, was present during the Metgethen massacre in East Prussia, and participated in the Fall of Berlin in May of 1945. Ryzhkov enlisted in the Soviet Armed Forces in 1970 - perhaps hoping to make amends of his father's exploits - and was stationed in East Germany.
In July of 1979, Ryzhkov led an infantry platoon through the Fulda Gap and into battle against NATO troops, attaining 15 confirmed kills within just days of the invasion. His skills as a marksman, as well as rumours of his father's exploits as a World War II veteran, contributed to his reputation as a cold-blooded murderer amongst NATO forces, even if he remained a mysterious figure, whose name will not be known until months after the initial invasion. 
== Personality & Traits ==
Boris Ryzhkov remains a mysterious figure among both Western and Eastern Bloc troops. American soldiers have described him as a 'bad soldier', a 'murderer who joined the military purely to satisfy his thirst for blood'; he is feared and hated in the West, but beloved in the Eastern Bloc, where, despite remaining largely anonymous, he has managed to gain near-mythical status as a heroic figure akin to Pavlov, Zaytsev and Pavlichenko. 
Looking past these two contradicting stories, Ryzhkov himself is still a paradoxical figure: he is fiercely patriotic but wary of the Kremlin's motives, he is proud of his reputation as both a hero and a villain, he hold his personal code of honour in high regard but is impatient with questions of morality.