The Last RPK Russia Will Ever Design - The RPK-16's Operational History and Legacy (PART 2)
- Heval
- Dec 12, 2025
- 7 min read
Part 1 covering the background and development of the machine gun can found here.
In-The-Wild
Around late 2017-early 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense would put an order in for a small experimental batch of the RPK-16. This marked the beginning of its testing and evaluation. [26][27] The Russian national guard, the Rosgvardia, and other law enforcement elements would also take an interest around this time.[28]
In October 2018, Lazarev Tactical photographed the machine gun at the range in the hands of a Spetsnaz officer. This sample featured some “tuning” by the operator and bore an Elcan Spectre, the short-barrel option, a knock-off Harris bipod, FDE foregrip, and a FAB Defense GL Core CP stock on an Armacon Monolith-3 AK buffer tube adapter.
In 2020, the RPK-16 would show up outside of Russia, in the throes and drama of the Syrian Civil War. The now deposed president of the country, Bashar al-Assad, was an ophthalmology student turned Ba’athist party dictator. Syria and the Tartus military base had been a key ring on the fist of Russia’s southern flank since the time of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad. Now, the rise of the Islamist State and the most violent episode of the Arab Spring, threatened it. While the revolution and ensuing civil war had begun in 2011, Russia would step in with a substantial air campaign, military police, Wagner mercenaries, and Spetsnaz teams in 2015. It was the latter that an RPK-16 would be spotted with. This sample, in the hands of the SSO, featured the long-barrel option, a suppressor, the drum magazine, and an LPVO optic.
One particular unit, the Spetsnaz of the 561st Emergency Rescue Center, would be spotted with the machine gun in both Russia and Syria, in off-hand appearances. The RPK-16 would get some particular limelight with the unit in a video, almost an advertisement, of a training demonstration of the unit’s and Kalashnikov Concern’s capabilities. This was recorded at one of their facilities in Sevastopol, in the disputed Crimea, around July 2018. Military tests and evaluations, around 2019, were wrapping up due to a lack of real adoption for the machine gun. That, however, didn’t mean the RPK-16 would disappear from arsenals or that Kalashnikov Concern would entirely give up on it despite their course-correction towards other developments.
Another photo in 2024 would emerge of the RPK-16, boasting a paint job and a thermal imaging scope. This was from a recovering VDV serviceman and a foreshadowing of what the machine-gun had been getting up to recently, despite the lack of MoD interest. [29]
An example from the depths of the Concern does exist of an RPK-16 featuring “Type 2” AK-12 furniture and an experimental ambidextrous selector, somewhat akin to the prototypes of the AK-EVO program. We would like to dub this incredibly obscure example the “RPK-EVO”. These features would never make it to the RPK-16 in the wild, however.
A story about a killed-in-action Spetsnaz operator would eventually come out on a well-connected Russian Telegram channel. The operator in question, in two separate photos, had an RPK-16 in slightly different configurations and paint jobs. He was confirmed to have been KIA’d in the Donbass region during the first few months of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and to have served in Syria. In both photos, the gun featured regular capacity magazines and red dots, such as the Aimpoint Comp 4S paired with a magnifier or an Aimpoint T1. At least in the one without a bipod and short barrel, the gun was more likely in the role of an assault rifle than a machine gun. [30][31]
Around the same time as the previous story, the Kalashnikov-expert VK page, AK-INFO, run by Pavel Ptitsyn, would post a pretty technical interview with a long-time reader about the RPK-16 they were currently using on the frontlines in Ukraine. The interviewed Spetsnaz operator mentioned the use of the RPK-16 in his unit from early 2023 to spring 2024 in three on-front rotations. They mostly used it as an assault rifle, replacing one of their riflemen’s AK-12s. While the kit was issued with both barrels, M125 drums, and 6L23.01 30-round magazines, they ended up mostly fielding it with the 415mm barrel, suppressor, and the regular box magazines. The 590mm barrel had a prong on the flash-hider break after 1,500 rounds. The included suppressor, proprietary to the RPK-16, apparently served quite well, with adequate flash suppression and minimal gas-blowback. The soldier compared it to a Hexagon Tactical offering that they had and said it performed better. On the opposite side of things, he was not particularly a fan of the barrel swapping process. Overall, the 415mm barrel saw at least 3,000 rounds, and they never experienced a cook-off with the closed-bolt gun. An oil can, a cleaning kit, a 6Sh46M magazine pouch, and a Dedal-NV Narukavnik-4 magnified prism optic were also included from the armory. [32]
By this point, the only institution interested in feedback about the gun from the interviewed Spetsnaz was its creators, Kalashnikov Concern, who have special representatives embedded across the front to gather troop feedback about all of their deployed products. And those representatives of the Concern certainly would have heard the problems about the M125 95-round drums, which the Spetsnaz soldier had repeated to AK-INFO. [32]
Achille’s magazine
In his experience, they were unreliable and caused misfeeds, failures to feed, and jams. Not only that, but they were fragile, and one drum managed to crack on the inside during use. [32] This is far from an exception regarding these drums, other Russian attempts at higher capacity magazines, and just high-capacity magazines and drums in general. [1]
These attempts include, but are not limited to, the 75-round M30, the 100-round M100 horizontal drums in both polymer and metal, the original quad-stacks for the AKM, the 6L31, an experimental 7.62x39 quad-stack around 2019, the “Vyuga-11” drums, and even the SPU device that fed bullets from a belt box into the magwell of an AK. All these attempts to increase capacity beyond the 45-round long magazines of the RPK-74 just never met the military’s standard for reliability, simplicity, cost, and/or weight, despite the original requirements for such in the Ratnik program. [1] The 7.62x39mm RPK metal drum did see adoption, but the long magazines were still held in higher regard, and as stated, the miracle couldn’t be repeated for 5.45x39mm. [1][33] Aftermarket quadmags, such as Pufgun’s or Stich Profi’s, do see use in Ukraine, however purely as soldier-purchased endeavors, and have never had a lick of institutional testing. [34] Friend of the author, Deni Almashnikov, over at the Just Guns YouTube channel, has a hands-on review of those that we recommend.
The failures of magazine feeding for light machine-guns amongst the beckoning call for fire superiority across the Ukrainian Steppes and trenches are why belt-fed systems are now the hot new thing for the Russian military. Kalashnikov Concern’s 5.45x39mm belt-fed RPL-20, after half a decade or more of development, is now finally being delivered to VDV troops, [35] and even Tula (TsKIB SOO) is getting in on the action with their (also 5.45) OTs-142. That latter one is an oddity, based on the previous OTs-124 and -128 full caliber belt-feds and their MTs-566 sniper rifle. It features a nifty, quick swap reloading system that still utilizes fabric belt boxes and even keeps the linkages in the bag. [36]
The PKM/PKP, arguably M.T.Kalashnikov’s real legacy, is still going strong with both aftermarket and adopted modernizations such as, but not limited to, Zenitco’s offerings, the PKZ, the 6P69, the 6P41M, etc. RPK-74s, in general, are seeing a decline in deployment, while some desperation is committed for even older belt-fed systems such as RPDs, RP-46s, the Nikitin TKB-521 (which is the trial loser to the original PK), the Maxim, and North Korean Type 73s. [37] This is something felt on both sides of the conflict.
Popular Media Appearances
Thus, the RPK-16’s biggest legacy is really in… video games. Easily, the most iconic boss of the hit extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov is Killa. Inspired by the memes of Rainbow Six’s Tachanka and the support class, he dons a gopnik-themed look with a Maska-1SCh helmet, custom 6B13M armor, a rip-off Adidas tracksuit, and his favorite support class weapon: the RPK-16. His home, the interchange map featuring an abandoned shopping mall (modelled after a real mall outside of St Petersburg), was added in Patch 0.8 in April, 2018. Killa wouldn’t claim it as his domain till his and the RPK-16’s addition in Patch 0.11 in December 2018. In-game, it rests just outside of "Tarkov city", in the semi-apocalyptic closed Norvinsk zone. [38]
The Russian devs behind EFT, Battlestategames, and their COO Nikita Buyanov sport close relations with Kalashnikov Concern. They’ve done more than one PR range visit together, and BSG would later add another peculiar gun of theirs, the MP-153 Ultima. That’s, of course, besides the obligatory inclusions of the standard AKs. [38][39]
In another popular game, the RPK-16 would be interestingly personified as an unhinged MILF android in the mobile gacha, Girl’s Frontline [40]
Due to happenstance, these are where the RPK-16 really forged its name instead of its obscure but existent military history, as it staves off becoming a truly forgotten weapon. It’s a particular branch and tangent of the full AK-12 story that we eventually hope to cover, so stay tuned for that. All sources for this research will be listed below.
Special thanks to Just Gun’s Deni Almashnikov and the “Warzone Armorer” on Instagram for numerous conversations about Russian machine guns and small arms in general, plus their invaluable help on some of the finer details of this research. We would also like to thank Safar-Publishing for lending us some of the excellent photos from their upcoming book, “Soviet Weapons of the Atomic Age”. You can check out all of their pages down below. Also, make sure to check out the author’s Twitter as he posts frequent spottings and uncovered info about small arms, OSINT, and history, which will probably include more info about the RPK-16.
Special Thanks to:
Just Guns - Deni Almashnikov:
TheWarzoneArmorer:
And for the works of Maxim Popenker:
And AK-INFO:
Sources for Parts 1 and 2:
[13]Deni Almashnikov
[29]Deni Almashnikov, https://vk.com/wall-96695355_12631