Who will tell Ukrainian foreign ministry that attempting to bully India may backfire?

The arrest of six Ukrainian nationals and one American citizen by the NIA, India’s premier counterterrorism body, is curious. Not just the act itself of foreign mercenaries making their way into India’s sensitive North-East region on the sly and then crossing over into Myanmar to train ethnic groups in guerilla warfare, but the reaction of Ukraine since the arrest.

Kyiv doth protest too much.

Since the detention of its nationals, Ukraine has released two statements. Both display a remarkable sense of entitlement, arrogance and the least bit of interest in engaging in quiet diplomacy with New Delhi. Ukraine seems to believe that taking recourse to shrill public posturing and feigning moral outrage will make its case stronger. The Volodymyr Zelenskyy regime should learn from Canada.

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After accusing India of orchestrating murder on its soil, a fantastic charge levelled by former prime minister Justin Trudeau who thought it fit to sacrifice India-Canada bilateral ties at the altar of his political expediencies, Ottawa under prime minister Mark Carney has now made an 180-degree turn and distanced itself from earlier accusations, clarifying that there is “no evidence” to prove foreign interference or transnational repression by India.

Ukrainian foreign ministry has accused Indian media of being “manipulative”, spreading “distorted interpretations of existing facts” and putting forward “groundless accusations”. Ukraine’s unease at free media in India doing its job is understandable, given the way Zelenskyy stifles media freedom at home and exercises iron grip on dissemination of information.

But to suggest that Indian media is “manipulating information” to present Ukrainian mercenaries in bad light is an alarming overdose of self-importance. Ukraine should not suffer from the illusion that it matters so much for Indian media to concoct stories about its mercenaries.

In a second statement issued Thursday, Ukraine claimed the case was “orchestrated and politically motivated.” Worth noting that even before investigations are over and a chargesheet has been filed – which may take 180 days under the provisions of the stringent UAPA law -- Ukraine has given “clean chit” to its nationals caught violating sovereign laws and alleged breaching of India’s national security, suggesting a grand conspiracy hatched by the Indian state in collusion with Russia to vilify Ukraine. This amount of conceit is hard to find. Through this over-the-top rhetoric, Ukraine is complicating own case. India is not a banana republic that it will respond to histrionics. The law and investigative agencies will take their own course.

One isn’t sure what Kyiv is thinking, but shouting “Russian disinformation” from the rooftop won’t help given the grim details of the case that has come to light, and the possible repercussions for India’s stability and national security.

The NIA has told a Delhi court that the six accused -- Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim, and Kaminskyi Viktor -- were part of a group of 14 Ukrainians and one American citizen, Matthew Aaron Van Dyke, who entered India on valid tourist visas, flew to Guwahati, and then proceeded to enter Mizoram without obtaining the required Protected Area Permit (PAP).

The group then illegally crossed over to Myanmar where the foreign mercenaries allegedly imparted “pre-scheduled training” in drone warfare, assembly, and jamming technology to ethnic armed groups (EAGs) -- groups that the NIA has specifically identified as being linked to terrorist organisations hostile to India’s security interests and operating inside Indian territory. The NIA in its FIR said the mercenaries “conducted training for EAGs on more than one (occasion), in addition to illegally importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India for the use of EAGs”, note media reports.

This is not a petty visa infraction, or, as the Ukrainian foreign ministry put it, “unintentional violation of established rules” due to lack of “proper marking on the ground”. Ukraine should refrain from insulting our intelligence. This has deep national security ramifications for a country that has been managing a volatile, militancy-prone northeastern region for decades.

Ukraine’s reaction is problematic and serves only to complicate matters. Ambassador Oleksandr Polishchuk handed over a formal protest note to India’s ministry of external affairs, “demanding the immediate release of the Ukrainian citizens” and “unhindered consular access”. The tone is imperial. In its public statements, Kyiv claimed there are “no established facts” proving the involvement of its citizens in any illegal activity in India or Myanmar, essentially accusing India of being a pawn in a Russian influence operation, a claim that is as extraordinary as it is unsubstantiated.

The most egregious aspect of Ukraine’s response is its demand for “immediate release” of the arrested nationals during investigations that are ongoing. It reflects disregard for India’s sovereign authority and shouldn’t be conflated with calls for ‘due process’. It is, in fact, a demand to overlook due process.

To demand “immediate release” before even the chargesheet is filed, before the judiciary has had a full opportunity to evaluate the evidence, and while eight more Ukrainians allegedly connected to the same network are still being sought, is an attempt to bully New Delhi into abandoning its legal and investigative procedures. The fact that Ukraine has zero leverage in putting forward these maximalist demands suggests that the Zelenskyy regime has a habit of drinking its own kool aid.

Ukrainian foreign ministry’s assertion that there are “no established facts” confirming the involvement of its citizens in illegal activity is notable in its brazenness. In its submission to the Delhi court, NIA has said that detainees themselves admitted to having conducted training for EAGs “on more than one occasion”. The court found sufficient cause to remand the accused to custody till March 27.

Ukraine’s subsequent assertion that the arrests are “orchestrated” and “politically motivated,” with an implicit suggestion that India acted on Russian intelligence, is not merely irresponsible, it is an attempt to drag India into the European quagmire.

India is not a party to the Russia-Ukraine war. New Delhi has consistently maintained its distance -- calling for peaceful settlement of dispute -- and has been engaging diplomatically with both Moscow and Kyiv while refusing to be drawn into Western or Russian pressure campaigns.

To suggest that India’s premier counter-terrorism body conducted a legally complex, multi-city coordinated arrest operation at Russia’s bidding, is to fundamentally misread the Indian state and its intelligence apparatus. It also reveals a certain misplaced chauvinism: the belief that India is either too naive to conduct independent threat assessments or too weak to act on its own security calculus.

The truth is considerably less flattering to Kyiv's narrative. India has documented for years the trans-boundary nexus between Myanmar-based insurgent groups and anti-India terrorist organisations operating in the Northeast. An NIA team, based on specific intel, was tracking these mercenaries for months.

That foreign nationals with combat experience and drone expertise were allegedly moving through the Mizoram-Myanmar border zone cannot be casually dismissed as geopolitical confection.

Ukraine should also drop the ‘innocent’ act. It “firmly rejects any insinuations regarding the possible involvement of the Ukrainian State in supporting terrorist activities”. Yet in Sudan, the Sudanese military (SAF) has publicly claimed that “foreign fighters including Colombians and Ukrainians” were killed fighting for the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur, casting them as “mercenaries” and “drone specialists.”

The Guardian has also reported on Ukrainian special forces operating in Sudan “in support of the country’s army against Russian Wagner mercenaries aligned with the rebel RSF.”

On NIA’s arrest of foreign mercenaries, Subir Bhaumik writes in The Federal, quoting unnamed sources from three Myanmar ethnic armed groups, that the arrested group was part of a larger cohort of “at least 15–20 Ukrainian mercenaries were currently training Kachin, Chin, PDF and Arakanese rebels in the use of combat drones. That is the only way the rebel forces could offset the advantage of airpower enjoyed by the Myanmarese military.”

It is conceivable that in their larger objective of aiding the Myanmar rebels, India’s sensitive North-East was being used as a discreet staging ground. The North-East is not a peripheral administrative concern. It is a region where the interplay of ethnicity, insurgency, cross-border militancy, and external state influence has claimed thousands of lives over decades. The seed of Manipur ethnic conflict, that threw the entire region into a state of violent turmoil for months, lay in the influx of Myanmar-based insurgent cadres into Indian territory with weapons and terror hardware with cross-border narco trade thrown into the mix.

Against this backdrop, New Delhi is unlikely to be lenient with instances of foreign nationals entering a restricted border state without proper permits, crossing illegally into Myanmar, training ethnic armed groups linked to terrorist organisations hostile to India, and smuggling drones from Europe through Indian territory. Ukraine should cut down on the fake moral outrage.

New Delhi’s foreign policy is guided by national interest, strategic autonomy, and a clear-eyed assessment of security threats. The notion that maximalist demands and ‘talking down’ will cause any meaningful recalibration in South Block is a fundamental misreading of Indian foreign policy.

(Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)