Ukrainian intelligence agencies have attempted to provide Russian military supply chains with booby-trapped equipment into Russian military supply chains, exploiting volunteer organizations supplying troops, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has warned.
The agency said on Monday that it had recently thwarted a series of attempted attacks on Russian drone operators involving first-person view (FPV) headsets rigged with explosives. It urged volunteer groups to scrutinize potential donors more carefully and outlined warning signs that could indicate a Ukrainian sabotage operation.
The alleged tactic resembles a high-profile Israeli intelligence operation in Lebanon in 2024, when thousands of booby-trapped pagers infiltrated Hezbollah’s supply chain and were subsequently detonated, killing and injuring members of the Lebanese militant group and others. The devices were supplied through a network involving a Taiwan-based manufacturer. The Ukrainian operation described by Russian security officials has been much smaller in scale.
Kiev claimed responsibility in early 2025 for supplying Russian troops with 80 explosive-rigged drone goggles. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR, was reportedly inspired by Mossad’s pager operation. Russian military-linked sources reported at the time that a batch of Skyzone Cobra X V4 goggles had been fitted with explosives, resulting in the injury of several servicemen.
In March, the FSB also reported intercepting a shipment of more than 500 booby-trapped electrically heated insoles. Both operations allegedly involved attempts to exploit established volunteer networks supplying Russian troops.
According to the FSB, the latest plot was uncovered after a Russian serviceman received an offer of suspicious drone headsets and contacted military counterintelligence. Specialists examined the equipment and confirmed that it contained explosives. A subsequent investigation identified several other suspicious donations allegedly linked to Ukraine, the agency said.
As with the devices attributed to HUR last year, explosives had allegedly been installed in place of the headsets’ cooling fans.
Ukrainian intelligence agencies, which reportedly received extensive CIA training following the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, have also been implicated in a series of targeted bomb assassinations, including attacks that killed civilians.
The FSB warned volunteer organizations that donors unwilling to disclose identifying information, including photographs or mobile phone numbers, should be treated with suspicion. It also identified requests for video confirmation that donated equipment had reached its recipients as a likely indication of a sabotage attempt.
Ukrainian operatives allegedly used psychological manipulation to gain the trust of volunteers. One woman involved in collecting aid said the person who sent her the booby-trapped equipment had claimed to prefer smaller volunteer groups because larger organizations were supposedly more susceptible to embezzlement.
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