Nicholai Ginovaef is a member of the UBCS Delta platoon, Company B. According to his backstory, Nicholai is from Moscow and served in the Russian Spetsnaz before joining the UBCS. He also has an unspoken rivalry with HUNK. In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Nikolai is one of the few surviving operatives from the Delta platoon, along with Carlos Oliveira and Mikhail Victor. He disappears after an event in the first half of the game and is presumed dead until another encounter with him.
It is revealed that Nikolai is in fact one of the Supervisors UBCS operatives, assigned to watch and gather combat data as their comrades fight against Umbrella's bio-weapons. Nicholai's fate depends on decisions made by the player, resulting in either his escape or death, either at the hand of Jill Valentine or the Nemesis. In the Resident Evil 3 remake, Nicholai is changed to a mole implanted within the UBCS for an unnamed organization. Hired to mitigate the company's efforts to contain the T-Virus outbreak, he murders research staff and tries to gain and destroy a virus vaccine. In the final confrontation with Jill and Carlos, he is injured and left behind in Raccoon City.
The English localization of Resident Evil Survivor features a document supposedly authored by Nicholai after the events of Nemesis. The file is different in the original Japanese version and the Chinese localization of the PC port. The third entry of the document (the portion dated after the events of Nemesis) was actually authored by the "Umbrella B.O.W. Development Staff", rather than Nikolai. Nicholai also appears in Resident Evil Outbreak in the final scenario "Decisions, Decisions", which depicts the character conducting another mission occurring during the same time period as the second half of Resident Evil 3. He is mentioned in The Umbrella Chronicles, where he is referred to by the codename "Silver Fox". Nicholai's role in Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City was stopping Wolfpack from completing their mission objective.
The character was adapted for the film Resident Evil: Apocalypse, although the film features a more heroic depiction of Nicholai, which differs from the game's original antagonistic portrayal of the character. In the film's novelization, he was renamed Nicholai Sokolov. Nicholai is ultimately torn to shreds by zombie dogs while holding them off so Alice and Jill can escape.