General Tarakanov

Sent to clear the roof of the Chernobyl reactor building after robotic equipment fails in the radiation, General Tarakanov commands the soldiers who must do the job by hand. He is blunt, businesslike, and unsentimental about what is being asked of them, laying out the risks and the time limits without flinching.

Ineson gives him a gravel-voiced steadiness that never curdles into cruelty — he is not indifferent to what he's ordering men to do, just determined not to let anyone linger in denial about it. In a series about institutional evasion, his plainness reads almost as mercy.