If you visit the Russian Wikipedia page about the PK machine gun, you will see a rather interesting image (see above) showing a soldier who holds a rather unusual “homemade” conversion of the PK machine gun. According to the article, the soldier on the picture represents the Artsakh Republic Defense Army. The picture was supposedly taken in 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
PKT is the version of PK machine gun dedicated for use in tanks and armored vehicles as a coaxial gun. This machine gun is fired via a solenoid trigger. Although the trigger mechanism does have a backup manual firing measure, it lacks a conventional trigger, sights, stock, grip and bipod. As seen in the image, that particular PKT was retrofitted with these parts to make it usable in the infantry role.
Outside of the vehicle, PKT is pretty much useless. You can’t shoulder or aim it and firing the backup trigger outside the vehicle is quite a tricky process, too. That’s why they were many attempts of converting the PKT machine gun for infantry use. Such a conversion not only allows to deploy the spare and salvaged machine guns in a different application but also allows the crew of a tank or armored vehicle to have a powerful weapon in case if they have to leave the vehicle and continue fighting outside of it.
Below you can find an image of such a conversion mechanism presumably designed in Ukraine.
Another such conversion called “machine gun survival kit” (see below) was designed in Tula, Russia.
Several months ago, The Firearm Blog reported about a twin-barreled conversion mount designed for PKT machine guns in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
The concept of converting the coaxial machine guns to GPMGs dates back at least to WW2 era when Germany issued conversion kits for tank versions of MG-34 machine guns.
Images from: armor.kiev.ua, forum.guns.ru, spec-naz.org, tk-union.tv