(Al Jazeera Media Network) India has arrested six Ukrainian nationals and an American citizen for allegedly entering India’s northeast region without permits and crossing to neighbouring Myanmar to train armed groups in drone warfare.
The foreign nationals were arrested by Indian police on March 13 at three different airports across the country. According to Indian media reports, the US national was detained by the Bureau of Immigration at Kolkata airport, three Ukrainians were detained in Lucknow, and three more in Delhi. It is not clear if they were on their way to Myanmar or returning from the country.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has charged them with violating the country’s “anti-terror” laws, and they will be held in custody until March 27.
Local police also arrested two more American tourists on Saturday for flying drones near Coast Guard headquarters in the southern city of Kochi – where India is harbouring sailors from an Iranian ship that it hosted in military exercises in February.
Another Iranian ship that India had hosted was torpedoed by the US early in the war, embarrassing New Delhi and killing dozens of Iranian sailors.
Who has been arrested?
According to Indian media reports, the seven foreign nationals arrested by the NIA have been identified as Matthew Aaron VanDyke from the US, and Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor, who are all Ukrainian citizens.
According to VanDyke’s personal website, he participated in the Iraq War and Libya’s civil war. He is the founder of a Washington, DC-based consulting firm called Sons of Liberty International. The organisation’s website says it “provides free security consulting and training services to vulnerable populations to enable them to defend themselves against terrorist and insurgent groups.” The company also ran operations in Ukraine between 2022 and 2023, when it provided training and advice to Ukraine’s military in using non-lethal equipment.
Not much is known about the Ukrainian citizens who have been arrested.
The NIA did not specify when the foreign nationals entered India nor when they crossed into Myanmar.
The two American tourists arrested in Kochi have been identified as 32-year-old Katie Michelle Phelps and 35-year-old Christopher Ross Harvey, both from California.
Why has India arrested the suspects in the Myanmar case?
The seven men were initially detained by the NIA for entering India’s northeastern state of Mizoram without valid permits and then illegally crossing into Myanmar.
This is not the first time foreign nationals have been arrested by India for entering northeastern states bordering the subcontinent’s approximately 1,640-km border with Myanmar. In April 2025, a Belgian photojournalist was arrested by police in Mizoram for allegedly entering the state without valid travel documents and then crossing into Myanmar.
On March 16, the NIA told a court in New Delhi that the seven foreign nationals had crossed to Myanmar to train armed groups fighting the military government in drone warfare.
According to The Indian Express daily newspaper, the NIA said the accused were involved in illegally “importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India” for the use of “ethnic armed groups”. The agency added that these groups also allegedly supported “Indian insurgent groups” by supplying weapons and training them in “terrorist” activities.
India’s northeastern states such as Mizoram and Manipur, which border Chin state in northern Myanmar, have a troubled history marred with ethnic tensions. Ethnic groups from the states, like Manipur’s Kuki National Army (KNA), also operate in Myanmar and have been actively fighting against the military government.
India, therefore, requires foreigners to obtain special permits before entering some northeastern states bordering Myanmar, particularly since the 2021 military coup there.
