Nikolai Fomin

Nikolai Fomin is the plant's deputy chief engineer, a company man who trusts the paperwork over his own eyes. As the reactor building begins to fail around him, he insists the numbers are wrong rather than believe the evidence, snapping at subordinates who dare suggest otherwise.

Adrian Rawlins plays denial as a physical process, a man visibly working to keep his composure while the ground shifts under Soviet certainty. The writing doesn't caricature him as a villain so much as a product of a system that punishes honesty, and Rawlins lets you watch that fear curdle into fury in real time.