diff --git a/core/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/IndexShard.java b/core/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/IndexShard.java
index e8aa9540e9822..de4cce5746491 100644
--- a/core/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/IndexShard.java
+++ b/core/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/index/shard/IndexShard.java
@@ -63,7 +63,6 @@
 import org.elasticsearch.common.util.BigArrays;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.util.concurrent.AbstractRunnable;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.util.concurrent.AsyncIOProcessor;
-import org.elasticsearch.common.util.concurrent.ThreadContext;
 import org.elasticsearch.common.xcontent.XContentFactory;
 import org.elasticsearch.index.Index;
 import org.elasticsearch.index.IndexModule;
@@ -421,10 +420,12 @@ public void updateShardState(final ShardRouting newRouting,
 
                 if (newRouting.primary()) {
                     final DiscoveryNode recoverySourceNode = recoveryState.getSourceNode();
+                    final Engine engine = getEngine();
                     if (currentRouting.isRelocationTarget() == false || recoverySourceNode.getVersion().before(Version.V_6_0_0_alpha1)) {
                         // there was no primary context hand-off in < 6.0.0, need to manually activate the shard
-                        final Engine engine = getEngine();
                         engine.seqNoService().activatePrimaryMode(getEngine().seqNoService().getLocalCheckpoint());
+                    }
+                    if (currentRouting.isRelocationTarget() == true && recoverySourceNode.getVersion().before(Version.V_6_0_0_alpha1)) {
                         // Flush the translog as it may contain operations with no sequence numbers. We want to make sure those
                         // operations will never be replayed as part of peer recovery to avoid an arbitrary mixture of operations with seq#
                         // (due to active indexing) and operations without a seq# coming from the translog. We therefore flush
diff --git a/qa/full-cluster-restart/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/upgrades/FullClusterRestartIT.java b/qa/full-cluster-restart/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/upgrades/FullClusterRestartIT.java
index 1fcb4fc4dbeb5..8ec33dfbfc9b7 100644
--- a/qa/full-cluster-restart/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/upgrades/FullClusterRestartIT.java
+++ b/qa/full-cluster-restart/src/test/java/org/elasticsearch/upgrades/FullClusterRestartIT.java
@@ -613,7 +613,6 @@ public void testEmptyShard() throws IOException {
      * Tests recovery of an index with or without a translog and the
      * statistics we gather about that.
      */
-    @AwaitsFix(bugUrl = "https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch/issues/27649")
     public void testRecovery() throws IOException {
         int count;
         boolean shouldHaveTranslog;
@@ -694,8 +693,9 @@ public void testRecovery() throws IOException {
                     fail("expected version to be one of [" + currentLuceneVersion + "," + bwcLuceneVersion + "] but was " + line);
                 }
             }
-            assertNotEquals("expected at least 1 current segment after translog recovery", 0, numCurrentVersion);
-            assertNotEquals("expected at least 1 old segment", 0, numBwcVersion);}
+            assertNotEquals("expected at least 1 current segment after translog recovery. segments:\n" + segmentsResponse,
+                0, numCurrentVersion);
+            assertNotEquals("expected at least 1 old segment. segments:\n" + segmentsResponse, 0, numBwcVersion);}
         }
     }