Estonian Surveillance Spots Machine Guns on Russian LNG Vessel
- On Monday, June 29, 2026, reports revealed Estonian border guards photographed the Russian Gazprom LNG tanker Marshal Vasilevsky operating in the Gulf of Finland with a Kord heavy machine gun mounted on its wheelhouse.
- The Marshal Vasilevsky supplies energy to Kaliningrad, a heavily militarized Russian exclave between NATO members Poland and Lithuania, as European countries impose sanctions to diminish Russian income.
- Captured in early May, the photographs provide the first public evidence of a Russian civilian tanker operating with heavy weaponry; the almost 300-metre-long natural gas tanker is not an ordinary cargo ship.
- An intelligence officer from the Baltic region noted that if heavy machine guns are aboard, "then the boarding risk assessment becomes completely different," making the probability of boarding effectively zero.
- Investigative journalist Holger Roonemaa suggested the weapon may counter Ukrainian UAV attacks or prevent inspections, while a Russian warship fired warning shots at a British-flagged yacht in the English Channel earlier this month.
29 Articles
29 Articles
The Russians have armed a Gazprom gas tanker with two Kord heavy machine guns. The weapons were spotted on board the civilian ship by Estonian border guards in May.
The security situation in the Baltic Sea is tense. Now, for the first time, images of an armed civilian ship became public.
Machine guns spotted on Gazprom tanker in the Baltic Sea — the first time Russia has armed a civilian vessel with heavy weapons
Estonia’s border guard service has photographed two large-caliber machine guns mounted aboard the Russian gas tanker Marshal Vasilevskiy in the Baltic Sea, the investigative project the Dossier Center reported.
Arming a civilian ship is an act of intimidation by the West, and Russia has no acceptable reason to arm the ship, two experts told Ilta-Sanomat.
This is the first time a Russian civilian tanker has installed heavy weapons.
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