The presence of armed guards was pointed out by the leakage of data from Russian ports, from which the analysis of the Tagesschau server is based. Even in 2023 and 2024, Russian tankers from the shadow fleet operated mainly without armed guards.
However, in the summer of 2025, 83 men who had the function of guards on tankers appeared on the lists of crew members that each ship must submit when docking in a Russian port. According to the Tagesschau, the vast majority were former soldiers with combat experience from the Wagner private military unit.
According to the statements of sources from the German secret services, former soldiers are being recruited by the Russian security agency Moran, which is based in Moscow. However, these mercenaries do not serve on routes where piracy is at risk, but in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas.
The Tagesschau explains that the armed men on board the tankers are intended to cause uncertainty among the authorities of the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance. “Since Western intelligence services assume that these men are usually armed with machine guns, the police and the military must take this risk into account when boarding the ships,” the server said.
According to representatives of the European security services, mercenaries also have the main task of maintaining the discipline and obedience of the crews, which mostly consist of foreigners, so that they do not cooperate too quickly with Western authorities, for example in the case of an approaching embarkation.
The Wagner Group is a Russian paramilitary organization owned by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. The group participated in the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. For example, she became famous for hiring convicts in her ranks. The Wagner family also formed the main fighting force in the conquest of the Ukrainian city of Bachmut.
But Prigozhin also led an uprising against the Russian regime on June 23, 2023, when his mercenaries occupied Rostov-on-Don and marched on Moscow. The rebellion ended the next day after the agreement. As the Guardian website recalled at the time, the rebels were not prosecuted if they signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense or went to Belarus.
Prigozhin himself died on the way from Moscow aboard a private plane in which a bomb exploded. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was set up at the behest of the then Secretary General of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, who now serves as an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
