Six Ukrainians and an American arrested in India earlier this year were involved in a drone attack on a civilian plane in Myanmar and were planning to carry out further activities in support of the rebels there, investigators said in a court filing approved this week.The foreigners were arrested during a series of raids on three airports across India and accused of illegally entering a border state without permits and crossing into neighbouring Myanmar to train ethnic militias in drone warfare.The National Investigating Agency told a Delhi court in a filing that it had “credible information” of the involvement of the foreigners in an attack on a civilian aircraft in Myanmar. In the filing, the anti-terrorism agency sought permission to question one of the Ukrainians, Viktor Kaminskyi, and the American, Matthew Aaron VanDyke, inside Delhi’s Tihar Jail, where they were lodged. It was granted on Monday.Mr VanDyke, originally from Maryland, has been known for covering conflict zones as a journalist and filmmaker. His films have been screened at more than 200 festivals worldwide and one of them, Point and Shoot, won the Best Documentary Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. Matthew Aaron VanDyke is known for travelling to conflict zones as a journalist and filmmakerThe agency said the Ukrainians had entered India on tourist visas and flown to the northeastern city of Guwahati before travelling to the border state of Mizoram without requisite permits. From there, they went into Myanmar “illegally to conduct a pre-scheduled training on drone warfare, drone operations, assembly and jamming” for ethnic armed groups targeting the military junta.On 20 February, the agency alleged, the Ukrainians, along with the American, were involved in a drone attack on a passenger aircraft at the Myitkyina airport in Kachin state. The plane was preparing to take off for Mandalay when it was targeted by a suicide drone, resulting in structural damage but no injuries. Myanmar's president Min Aung Hlaing with India's Narendra Modi before their meeting in Delhi on 1 June 2026 (Reuters)The foreign nationals had earlier “travelled similarly through Mizoram and conducted training on two occasions in addition to illegally importing huge consignments of drones and their relevant parts from Europe to Myanmar via India”, the agency said. They were training ethnic armed militias “known to support certain proscribed Indian insurgent groups by supplying weapons, terrorist hardware and training them thus affecting national security and interests of India”.The agency said it had sent “multiple digital devices” seized from the accused for forensic examination and now needed more time to analyse the “very huge and voluminous data”. “During scrutiny of the data extracted from seized devices of the accused persons, incriminating information and facts emerged in the form of images, videos, voice samples, etc, which are required to be confronted and corroborated with arrested accused persons in order to take the investigation to its logical conclusion,” the agency said.Investigators also needed more time to interrogate the accused to “unearth the larger conspiracy” in the case.A man stands near a burning house following a suspected airstrike by Myanmar's military at Kyauk Ni Maw village in western Rakhine state on 9 January 2025 (AFP via Getty)Myanmar has been in the throes of a bloody civil war since the military overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a 2021 coup. The civil war has killed more than 100,000 people, according to the conflict-monitoring group ACLED, as the military and the ethnic groups fighting it have been accused of targeting homes, schools, camps for the displaced, and medical facilities.After years of fighting with anti-junta forces, the military held elections between late 2025 and early 2026 that were widely criticised as neither free nor fair. The military-backed process resulted in Min Aung Hlaing becoming president in April 2026, allowing the former coup leader to formally consolidate his grip on power.India has maintained diplomatic engagement with Ming Aung Hlaing and his government despite the conflict and international criticism of the military rule, driven by security concerns along their shared border and Delhi’s wider strategic interests in the region. In June, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi hosted Min Aung Hlaing for his first official visit as president.