India’s anti-terror agency has arrested six Ukrainians and an American for allegedly training Myanmar’s ethnic militias in drone warfare, exposing a murky network stretching across conflict zones.
The National Investigation Agency arrested the foreigners during raids at three airports on 13 March and brought them to the capital Delhi for investigation.
They are accused of entering the restricted border state of Mizoram without permit and then crossing into neighbouring Myanmar with the intention of training anti-junta ethnic militias in drone warfare, including the operation, assembly, jamming, and handling of these weapons systems.
Mizoram borders Myanmar’s Chin state.
Myanmar has been engulfed in a civil war since the military overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a 2021 coup.
India requires foreigners to obtain entry permits for some sensitive northeastern border states that have a history of ethnic and security tensions.
A Delhi court on Monday sent the arrested foreigners to police custody for 11 days and set 27 March as the date for hearing the matter.
The six Ukrainians were identified as Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim, and Kaminskyi Viktor.
The American was named Matthew Aaron Van Dyke, a self-described “freedom fighter” who had fought in Libya and Ukraine and worked as a war correspondent in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The arrests have sparked a diplomatic row between Delhi and Kyiv, with Ukraine pushing back raising concerns over consular access.
Ukrainian ambassador Oleksandr Polishchuk met Indian foreign ministry official Sibi George and handed over a protest note “demanding immediate release of the Ukrainian citizens and access to them”.
The meeting took place on Monday, according to a spokesperson for the Ukraine embassy in Delhi.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said “no established facts” proving the involvement of its citizens in any illegal activity in India or Myanmar had been presented so far.
“We draw attention to the fact that there are certain restricted-access zones in India for foreign nationals, entry to which is possible only with special permits,” the ministry said in a statement.
“At the same time, proper marking of such areas on the ground is often absent, which creates a risk of unintentional violation of the established rules.”
A US embassy spokesperson said they were aware of the situation but declined to comment further, citing privacy reasons.
The Delhi court order did not name the Myanmar-based ethnic armed groups the accused allegedly met.
Citing an investigation update, it said the accused were suspected of offering support to “proscribed Indian insurgent groups by supplying weapons and other terrorist hardware and training them, thus affecting national security and interests of India”.
Three of the Ukrainians were arrested at the Delhi airport and three in Lucknow. The American was detained at the Kolkata airport. They were all arrested within hours of each other.
According to local media, the foreigners were arrested on the basis of intelligence shared by Russian authorities. This has not been confirmed by officials, however.
On Wednesday, an Indian lawyer representing the Ukrainians withdrew from the case, citing “professional exigencies”.
India has been constructing a 1,643km fence along its border with Myanmar, a porous frontier running across the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland, where communities live in close proximity to the boundary.
Myanmar’s ongoing civil war has intensified concerns over illegal cross-border movement, with many fleeing into India to escape the conflict.
Additional reporting by agencies.
