Machine Guns Were Discovered On The Russian Tanker "Marshal Vasilevsky"

This is the first time a Russian civilian tanker has installed heavy weaponry.

Two large-caliber machine guns were spotted on the Russian gas tanker “Marshal Vasilevsky,” owned by Gazprom. For the past year, the tanker has been sailing exclusively between Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, without entering the territorial waters of other countries. The Estonian Border Guard Service took photographs of the gas tanker with a machine gun mounted on board while flying over the Baltic Sea in early May. It provided the images to the local newspaper Eesti Ekspress, which published them on Monday, June 29. Other media outlets, including Germany’s WDR and NDR, also gained access to the photos, according to DW.

The photos were presumably taken north of the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, near the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. “These weapons indicate that Russia is on high alert due to the threat of Ukrainian drone attacks, which persists even in the Baltic Sea,” said maritime security expert Moritz Breck in an interview with journalists from the German news program Tagesschau.

However, placing the weapon on a civilian vessel will not prevent it from passing through the international or territorial waters of other countries, notes Alexander Proels, a professor of international maritime law at the University of Hamburg. Problems would arise only if the weapons were taken on board in the territorial waters of a third country or if they were directed against coastal states.

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