Sweden Fits Guns To Coast Guard Vessels As Baltic Tensions Rise

By Charlie Duxbury

Jun 27, 2026 (Bloomberg) –Sweden is fitting machine guns to its civilian coast guard vessels to better counter what it views as an intensifying threat from Russia-linked vessels on the Baltic Sea. 

The weapons, of the KSP 58-type, will better allow coast guard staff to defend themselves at sea, Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said during a visit to the vessel Triton on Sweden’s Baltic Sea island of Gotland.

“We are seeing how the heightened tensions in our surrounding region are being reflected in an increasingly uncertain security situation in the Baltic Sea,” Bohlin said. “This means