Ukraine demands India release six citizens in drone case
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- Ukraine's Foreign Ministry issued a statement on March 17 calling for the immediate release of the six citizens, and Ambassador Oleksandr Polishchuk delivered a formal protest note to Indian Foreign Ministry official Sibi George on March 16 demanding consular access.
- India's National Investigation Agency, the country's main counter-terrorism body, is leading the probe into the six Ukrainians and one American, who were arrested at three different airports on the night of March 13 and remanded to police custody until a March 27 hearing.
- The Delhi court order accused the group of illegally entering Mizoram, crossing into Myanmar's Chin State, training anti-junta ethnic armed groups in drone warfare, and importing large drone consignments from Europe to Myanmar via India.
- Ukraine countered that there are "no established facts proving the involvement of the said Ukrainian citizens in unlawful activities" on the territory of India or Myanmar.
- Ukraine also argued that India's restricted-access zones are often poorly marked on the ground, creating "a risk of unintentional violation of the established rules" — a defensive line that reframes part of the case as a bureaucratic issue.
- The US embassy said it was aware of the detained American's case but declined to comment "for privacy reasons"; India's Foreign Ministry and a Myanmar government spokesperson did not respond to Reuters.
Why it matters: The case fuses Ukraine's drone-warfare expertise with Myanmar's civil war, and the court order's claim that the group supported "proscribed Indian insurgent groups" ties it to a months-long ethnic conflict in **Manipur** that officials say was fueled by militants returning from Myanmar in 2024. The March 27 hearing will test whether India's counter-terrorism agency can substantiate those national-security charges or whether Ukraine's poorly-marked-zones defense gains traction.
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