NIA arrests one American in Kolkata and six Ukrainians in Mizoram — geopolitics analyst Manish Anand breaks down the Bangladesh axis, Manipur violence link, and the alleged US foothold strategy
By TRH Op-Ed Desk
New Delhi, March 20, 2026 — The arrest of one American and six Ukrainian nationals by the National Investigation Agency is not, in the assessment of geopolitics analyst Manish Anand, a routine law enforcement operation. It is, he argued in a special episode of The Raisina Hills, a window into a covert foreign intervention architecture that has been quietly assembling itself across India’s most sensitive frontier — the northeast.
“This is no less than a shocking event in matters of geopolitics, internal security, and national security,” Anand said, adding: “In the last decade, there is hardly any journalist who can recall an American being arrested in India in a terrorism or national security case. That itself tells you the scale of what has happened.”
The arrested American was detained in Kolkata. The six Ukrainians were picked up from Mizoram. The NIA alleges the group was conducting activities against India’s interests in the northeast and working against Myanmar’s military junta — training ethnic armed groups in drone warfare, assembly, and signal jamming while using Indian territory as a transit corridor for European-origin equipment.
Anand placed the arrests within a geography that he described as uniquely and dangerously sensitive. India’s northeast shares long, porous borders with three countries simultaneously — China to the north, Myanmar to the east, and Bangladesh to the west. Each border carries its own conflict dynamic. China’s boundary with India remains disputed and periodically volatile. Myanmar has been in civil war for two years, with rebel groups — backed by external forces, according to Anand — attempting to overthrow the military junta. Bangladesh, following the ousting of Sheikh Hasina, now has a government with a historically anti-India orientation operating in close proximity to active American diplomatic engagement.
“The communities living in the hills of Mizoram and Manipur along the Myanmar border share blood relations with communities on the other side,” Anand noted. He added, saying: “Movement across that border is constant. That is also why drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and now reportedly drone trafficking have all been concentrated in that corridor.”
Manipur has been burning for three years. Security agencies have been unable to fully normalise the situation. The Kuki community remains unwilling to establish peace with the Meitei community. The situation, in Anand’s words, “remains fragile” — and that fragility is precisely what external actors seek to exploit.
Anand outlined what he described as the broader strategic logic behind the alleged operation — one that geopolitical analysts and intelligence sources have been warning about. The theory, as he presented it: the United States wants a foothold in this arc of South and Southeast Asia. Sheikh Hasina repeatedly warned that Washington had designs on Saint Martin’s Island in Bangladesh as a potential base. Her government’s refusal to accommodate American strategic interests in the region contributed to the deterioration in US-Bangladesh relations that preceded her removal. Following her ouster, American diplomats have been conspicuously active in Dhaka.
The larger alleged plan, according to sources Anand cited, involves exploiting Myanmar’s instability to engineer a new political entity in the region — one that could absorb displaced Rohingya, Christian minority populations from Myanmar and Bangladesh, and serve as an American sphere of influence in a zone that currently sits between Chinese and Indian strategic competition.
“If such a plan is being developed by American intelligence agencies — and Sheikh Hasina warned about this repeatedly — then it is a matter of very serious concern for India,” Anand said, adding: “Our agencies need to be far more active. Every foreign element operating in Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland — their identification, arrest, and elimination from this network must become an urgent priority.”
The Manipur-Myanmar-Bangladesh triangle, he argued, now has a fourth coordinate: Ukraine. The presence of six Ukrainian nationals — a country aligned with the United States, hostile to Russia, and antagonistic toward China — in a covert operation running through India’s most insurgency-prone border zone connects threads that New Delhi cannot afford to leave unexamined.
“The nexus is vast and sprawling,” Anand concluded. “Dismantling it within a defined time frame has become critically important.”
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