Heavy Machine Guns Appear on Key Russian Commercial Tanker in Baltic
30th June 2026
One of Russia’s commercially flagged vessels in the Baltic has appeared armed with heavy machine guns, and it isn’t just any cargo hauler. The weapons fit is likely intended to provide close-in protection against naval drone attacks but is also evidence of increasingly bold measures taken by Moscow to ensure that military bases in its strategically important Kaliningrad exclave continue to be supported. After all, the ship in question, the Marshal Vasilevskiy, is a highly strategic one — Russia’s only floating storage and regasification vessel — that plays a key role in supporting Kaliningrad.
This comes at the same time that Russia ramps up efforts to protect its notorious ‘shadow fleet,’ used to circumvent Western sanctions on oil exports, despite efforts to interdict it.
Evidence of the armed tanker development was brought to light in an exclusive report from Holger Roonemaa, an investigative journalist working for Delfi Estonia, an Estonia-based news website.
Roonemaa secured the release of imagery from the Estonian Border Guard showing the Marshal Vasilevskiy operating in the Baltic Sea last month, with machine gun positions on either side of the deck above the bridge.