India-Russia relations stands as a time-tested comprehensive strategic partnership. In one such pivotal diplomatic and security assistance, Russia has helped India to arrest six Ukrainian and one US citizen by rendering key information pertaining to the identity of the infiltrators. The US and Ukrainian citizens had illegally penetrated into India and reached Myanmar where they reportedly assisted the armed ethnic groups in terms of training and rendering weapons including drones and jamming tools, thus posing a major national security threat.
As per the sources, based on the information shared by the Russian authorities National Investigation Agency(NIA) arrested the infiltrators from the United States and Russia. As they are apprehended, the security officials are now investigating who might have helped the foreign nationals to penetrate into India illegally. The US and Ukrainian citizens reached Mizoram and crossed over to Myanmar as per the reports. The NIA was swiftly operating in the North Eastern region for over three months now to arrest the suspects. In this path, the critical information shared by Russia was useful.
However, the authorities did not disclose the extent of information shared by Russia that helped to arrest the infiltrators. They were arrested on March 13 at Delhi, Lucknow and Kolkata airports. The Delhi Court remanded the culprits to NIA custody till March 27. The six detained Ukrainians are said to be a part of the larger group of 14 people who had travelled to Myanmar. Thus, the authorities are tracing the identity of other infiltrators to know whether they are still in Myanmar or have left India. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ambassador to India asserted that the country is ready to cooperate in the probe against its citizens and wants the process to be “fair and objective”. However, the US Embassy did not comment on anything related to the issue.
Meanwhile, NIA declared that the seven individuals, six from Ukraine and one from the US entered India on tourist visas on separate dates. Later, they flew to Guwahati and then to Mizoram without requisite documents such as Restricted Area Permit(RAP) or Protected Area Permit(PAP). From Mizoram, the suspects illegally entered Myanmar where they were pre scheduled to conduct training programmes for the armed groups. These Myanmar based ethnic armed groups were known to be linked to terror groups who are operating in India in the domain of drone warfare, jamming technology etc.
NIA also has admitted before the court that during the interrogation, the seven suspects acknowledged their role in training the armed groups of Myanmar along with illegally importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India. Earlier, the Chief Minister of Mizoram had said that nearly 2,000 foreigners visited the state between June and December 2024 and many of them didn’t come as tourists and left unnoticed. He also alleged that UK and US nationals had illegally crossed into Myanmar from Mizoram to provide arms training to insurgents in the neighbouring country, thus posing national security threat to India.
