KYIV — Ukrainian intelligence operators have taken a page out of Mossad’s playbook, planting explosive devices in Russian virtual reality (VR) goggles earlier this month that exploded in the eyes of Moscow’s drone pilots, The Post can reveal.
“The Russian occupation forces have experienced a series of explosions of goggles for FPV drones during their use by pilots,” a Ukrainian intelligence official told The Post on Thursday.
“Russian propagandists write about dozens of similar cases that occurred in several regions of the Russian Federation in the first days of February.”
The operation — which injured “dozens,” according to the official — was carried out by specialists from the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine.
A Russian drone pilot wears goggles to fly the unmanned aircraft.
It was unclear whether any of the Russians died from their injuries.
“Today, the horrors of war are literally happening right before the eyes of enemy FPV pilots,” said the Directorate, known as the GUR, in a statement. “This is a well-deserved punishment for the war crimes that the Russian occupiers commit against Ukraine every day.”
The explosives were installed inside goggles that were handed out to the FPV pilots by Russian volunteers.
The explosives were planted in the headsets by Ukraine before they were handed out by volunteers.
“A large batch of (drone) goggles for Russian Armed Forces pilots was purchased to carry out the task,” individuals involved in the operation said. “Ukrainian intelligence specialists additionally equipped them with a remote detonation function.”
“After that, in coordination with the GUR, Russian volunteers sent ‘explosive’ glasses free of charge, as a charitable aid, to the [drone] units of the enemy army.”
Not all the explosives have been detonated yet, GUR sources emphasized — and Russian resistance fighters are planting more.
“The long and complex operation to burn out the enemy’s eyes is ongoing,” Ukrainian intelligence said. “… Now, there are glasses with a surprise made for the Russian occupiers no longer only in the Ukrainian Carpathians, but also in Russian Siberia.”
The number of Russian troops injured in the blasts was not immediately available.
John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said both Kyiv and Moscow use FPV drones en masse to carry out operations, with a large bulk of the Kremlin’s supply coming from volunteers.
“Tons of organizations are involved in this, so this means that Ukraine managed to infiltrate a part of the supply chain to carry this out,” Hardie told The Post.
“I don’t think this operation is replicable, but it could cause Russian pilots to be worried about their equipment,” he added.
“This means Russia may have to rethink their donation supplies, or be forced to implement more inspections and screenings, which could cause a big headache for Moscow.”
NPP, a Russian company that supplies equipment for the military, told state news agency Tass earlier this month that a batch of drone goggles had been sabotaged with explosives that detonate when the devices are turned on.
“When the glasses were turned on, they detonated and exploded,” NPP representative Igor Potapov told Tass.
Potapov noted that the booby-trapped goggles were donated as humanitarian aid, matching Kyiv’s claims.
The pro-Russian Telegram channels Razved Dozor and Readovka also shared images of the tampered FPV drone goggles as early as Feb. 7, claiming that the equipment contained 10 to 15 grams of plastic explosives.
The operation is reminiscent of Israel’s large-scale pager operation against Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon last year.
That operation saw the Jewish state infiltrate Hezbollah’s supply-line, flooding the terror group with bobby-trapped devices that were all detonated at the same time, killing a dozen people and injuring more than 2,800 others.
