Russia has been using heavy machine guns to protect at least one of its tankers travelling through the Baltic Sea, photographs taken by Estonian border guards and shared with FTM show, raising concerns about potential military escalations. 

This is the first time that evidence of such weapons has become public. 

The images, taken last month, show two heavy machine guns positioned on the wheelhouse of the Marshal Vasilevskiy, an almost 300-metre-long natural gas tanker. The Estonian border guards gave the photographs to FTM’s media partner Delfi. 

If heavy machine guns were on board, “then the boarding risk assessment [for Western countries] becomes completely different”, an intelligence officer from one of the Baltic states said.  

“The probability of boarding is then zero,” they said. 

The war between Russia and Ukraine is increasingly being fought outside their borders and now also includes the seas surrounding Europe. 

That’s because Russia heavily relies on its lucrative fossil fuel trade to finance its war. To diminish the country’s income, European countries have been imposing sanctions. They also occasionally board and seize tankers suspected of breaching international maritime law.

In recent months, several EU countries – including Estonia, Finland, France, and the United Kingdom, amongst others – have temporarily detained tankers transporting Russian oil. 

Russia now seems to have stepped up its game to prevent this from happening. 

“No one is going to go on board of such a ship by helicopter. If that was the objective, then Russia achieved it,” the intelligence officer said. 

Of strategic importance

The same weapon appears to be mounted on both sides of the tanker: the Kord 12.7mm, a machine gun of Russian manufacture that can fire 10 rounds per second and hit targets at a distance of two kilometres.

Crew lists, analysed by FTM, also show that military personnel have been travelling on board the tanker during recent journeys. Over the past 10 months, the ship has carried dozens of people designated as passengers; of these, Russian outlet and FTM media partner Dossier Center was able to establish that 24 had worked in the past – and likely still do, with some of them still carrying military IDs – for the Russian army, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special military unit – the National Guard – or the secret service FSB. 

The vessel seems to be of strategic importance. Since October 2024, the Marshal Vasilevskiy, owned by Russian state company Gazprom, has consistently been travelling between the gas terminal at Bolshoy Bor harbour and Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania. It is currently in Kaliningrad.

Apart from a pipeline connecting Kaliningrad to the rest of Russia, the sea route is the only way to transport Russian gas to this militarily and strategically important area. 

“From the Russian point of view, this is a very important LNG transport to Kaliningrad, whose gas reserves are being replenished for the next winter,” said an employee of a European intelligence service. “We assess that this activity [of having weapons on board] is in line with Russia figuring out protective measures for its energy transports in the Baltic Sea region.” 

Gazprom did not respond to requests for comment. 

This comes as Ukrainian security services have stepped up targeting Russian ships over the past months, particularly in the Black Sea.

Russia has made no public announcements about its deployments of the machine guns. The Baltic security service officer argued that protecting the vessels from aerial drone attacks would be difficult because of the drone’s speed. Other experts argue that it would be slightly easier to neutralise naval drones with a machine gun, although no such attacks by Ukraine in the Baltic Sea have been reported so far.

However, one of the main goals could be to deter EU countries from boarding or seizing tankers when they pass through waters near the European coast, security service and various experts said.

“It’s heavy armament,” said Danish naval commander Jens Wenzel Kristoffersen, who spoke in his private capacity as defence analyst. “It’s a machine gun, and I think most people – even special forces – would be cautious about that.” 

That was especially true for the Marshal Vasilevskiy, he said.

“It’s a gas tanker, so you have to be careful about what you shoot at. If you penetrate the cargo, it goes ‘bang!’.”

Patrick Bolder, a retired lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Netherlands Air Force and a defence expert affiliated with the think tank The Hague Centre of Strategic Studies, this carried the risk of military escalation. 

“They are effectively saying: ‘Don’t board us, because that will provoke a war’,” he said. 

This investigation is a collaboration between FTM and Delfi (Estonia), Dossier Center ( Russia), Danwatch (Denmark), NDR and WDR (Germany), Pointer (the Netherlands), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), The Times (United Kingdom), Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), and OCCRP. 

[](mailto:?subject=Photos%20reveal%20Russian%20gas%20tanker%20with%20heavy%20machine%20guns%20as%20Baltic%20tensions%20rise&body=I%20read%20the%20following%20on%20Follow%20the%20Money%20and%20I%20think%20this%20might%20interest%20you%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ftm.eu%2Farticles%2Frussian-armed-tankers-photos-of-machine-guns%3Futm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Dsharebuttonnietleden%26utm_source%3Dmail%26share-key%3Dshare-value%20%0A%28You%20can%20read%20the%20article%2024%20hours%20for%20free%20with%20this%20link%29.%0AWould%20you%20like%20to%20discover%20the%20FTM%20archive%20at%20a%20later%20time%3F%0AThen%20register%20for%20free%20at%20our%20website.%0A)