Divyesh Singh

Nothing can be more shocking than the fact that an American veteran of covert wars in Ukraine and elsewhere and his six Ukrainian accomplices, all with military backgrounds, were allowed to walk free from a New Delhi prison despite facing charges of terrorist conspiracy and waging war against the Indian state. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), in court filings, said the seven operatives were part of a larger international network that smuggled drones into India and then into Myanmar. The seven were freed following U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s intervention on their behalf, shortly after the NIA expanded its case by linking the operatives to a drone attack on a Myanmar National Airlines commercial jetliner on February 20, 2026, as passengers were boarding for a domestic flight. Their release has widely been seen as India caving to external diplomatic pressure. It demonstrated a longstanding pattern dating back to the unprecedented Bhopal gas tragedy, in which successive Indian governments have diluted or dropped high-profile criminal cases involving foreign nationals under geopolitical pressure. Zelensky has boasted that Ukraine has sent more than 200 drone specialists to Persian Gulf states and other countries to train local forces and develop countermeasures. But India’s arrest of six Ukrainian drone experts and the American operative raised troubling questions about Ukraine’s involvement in a proxy war against military-ruled Myanmar, using India’s sensitive northeast as an unlawful operational corridor. Now, the American operative, Mathew VanDyke, is openly mocking the Indian government, tweeting that he “will reveal shocking details about this story over the next few months in both posts and media interviews.”