Military Briefing

Yevgeny Volgin was the son of Boris Volgin, a member of The Philosophers and the man who was in charge of managing and laundering the $100 billion fund that would come to be known as The Philosophers Legacy. Boris Volgin used some sort of illegitimate means to gain control of the entire Legacy. Yevgeny inherited it when his father died. He hoped to use this fund and the super weapon Shagohod to gain world dominance. He established a major military fortress, which he dubbed Groznyj Grad, using his vast fortune, where the Shagohod could be developed without interruption from the Soviet government.

Volgin was a giant of a man, at well over six feet tall, and was known throughout the Soviet Union as a brutal, cold-blooded sadist. He thoroughly enjoyed torturing prisoners, and was even said to remove their blindfolds before he beat them to death. Although his intent was usually a simple interrogation, he showed no remorse and in fact barely noticed, when his victims died. He also massacred numerous members of his own faction whilst chasing Naked Snake and EVA in the Shagohod and used an American made Davy Crockett miniature nuclear warhead on Russian citizens. He was the inspiration for Ocelot's love for torture, who later in life referred to it as "the ultimate form of expression." During World War II, he took part in the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which the Soviets murdered over 20,000 Polish citizens.

Volgin was also an extremely strong man, even for his large size. Volgin's powerful physical attacks were due to his amateur boxing background prior to joining the GRU. When angry, Volgin had enough power to punch through a concrete wall several feet thick. In addition to his unprecedented brute strength, his body carried an electrical charge of up to ten million volts, which he used in conjunction with his fighting style, allowing him to electrocute people and things as well as using it to manually discharge rifle rounds without using a gun. He could protect himself from gunfire by surrounding himself with a strong electromagnetic field. Because of these abilities, Volgin was known in the West as Thunderbolt.