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Ilya Petrov
Mark Laursen
Days of Our Lives
Portrayed by Kai Wulff (1983-86, 1991)
Mark Laursen (2016)
Current status Former; Guest
Duration 1983-1986, 1991, 2016
First appearance February 18, 1983
Last appearance March 8, 2016
Cause/reason Left Town
Created by Margaret DePriest and Sheri Anderson
Introduced by Betty Corday and Al Rabin (1983)
Ken Corday and Al Rabin (1991)<br[[>Ken Corday]], Albert Alarr and Greg Meng (2016)
Profile
Gender Male
Occupation Henchman
Teacher
Assassin
Residence Formally, Salem, Illinois
Relationships

Ilya Petrov is a character from the soap opera Days of Our Lives, portrayed by Kai Wulff from 1983 to 1986 and for a few episodes in 1991.

In 2016, actor Mark Laursen took over the role for a few episodes.

Background

Petrov was one of Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo)s Henchmen during the 1980s. With the exception of Bart Biederbecke and Dr.Wilhelm Rolf, Petrov is the most well known henchman of Stefano's. In comparison to Bart, he mostly succeeded and completed his assignments. He was involved in the hostage crisis at Ridgecrest involving Marlena Evans and Liz Chandler, as well as the attempted bombing at the Hospital Benefit Concert and framing of Roman Brady for the Salem Slasher.

Storylines

Petrov assisted Stefano DiMera in a few of his many schemes. When Stefano kidnapped Marlena Evans & Liz Chandler in early 1983, Petrov was the one who kept an eye of them so they wouldn't escape. He then had small assignments in Stefano's devilish Salem Slasher plot. When Stefano had to escape after some failures of both himself and Andre DiMera, Petrov was already in the car. But Roman Brady and Abe Carver were ready as well and chased them. After struggling to shake off the police, and a drunk Alex Marshall caused some problem, the car drove off a bridge and fell down into a river. Alex was found but neither Petrov or Stefano.

A few months later, Stefano was seen very much alive looking for the three prisms, and soon Petrov was seen taking orders from Stefano. He kidnapped Hope Williams for Stefano in an attempt to faster lure Roman into Stefano's trap. He also got instructions from Stefano on how to activate the volcano. After locking up a noisy Shane Donovan, he fulfilled his orders and activated the volcano successfully. One of Petrov's last missions was to bring John Black the Pawn to Salem.

In late 1985-early 1986, Petrov was seen in Miami, representing Stefano in a three-way wager with Victor Kiriakis and corrupt ISA chief George Nickerson, with the stakes being "the Purse (provided by Victor, which turned out to be clues to the locations of (1) a set of stolen U.S. Treasury engravings which were hidden in 1979 in Stockholm, and (2) a priceless Mayan treasure that could only be located during a specific astronomical event in 1991), The Power (provided by the ISA, a code book with information that ostensibly gave the holder total immunity from every intelligence and law enforcement network in the world), and the Pawn (a "most formidable and dangerous man" controlled by Stefano, at the time believed to be the missing-and-presumed-dead Roman Brady but later retconned into the separate character of John Black)."

Petrov was later thought to have been killed by Victor, but in 2016, it was revealed that he was still alive.

In 2016, John Black embarked on an ISA-assisted quest to unravel the mysteries of his heretofore unknown past, including his parentage, once and for all. This coincided with the show's 50th anniversary. An important scene showed John viewing an ISA computer file on Petrov, which expanded his story to reveal that he was a Cold War-era Soviet agent who defected to the West, and became at one point a teacher at a private school in Vermont called Winterthorne around the time he became one of Stefano's henchmen. Winterthorne was later revealed to be a "front" for a secret training facility for assassins, run by a Far Eastern organization called the Phantom Alliance, which turned out to have been founded in the 1950s by John's real father, Tim Robicheaux aka "Yo Ling". Petrov was revealed to have been Yo Ling's accomplice, and temporarily "defected" to Stefano's organization. In this storyline, it was suggested that Petrov eventually returned to the Phantom Alliance's fold.

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