By Independent News Roundup
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova sharply criticized the Ukrainian Embassy’s official response to India’s arrest of six Ukrainian mercenaries (and one American whose involvement they left out) who are accused of violating national security legislation. According to local media reports, they were tasked with training Indian-designated terrorist groups in Myanmar in drone warfare, which readers can learn more about here. The present piece will review and analyze Zakharova’s reaction.
She began by describing the abovementioned crimes that the mercenaries were accused of committing before noting how the embassy’s response conspicuously omits them, instead attempting to deflect from the scandal by insinuating that Russian media distorted the facts to divide Ukraine and India. In her view, “The incident clearly shows that Zelensky’s neo-Nazi regime is a core exporter of instability worldwide…reaching as far as regional conflicts in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.”
Zakharova elaborated that “Russia has repeatedly issued warnings about the risks associated with the large-scale militarisation of Ukraine by NATO and the EU. Weapons supplied to it are inadequately accounted for and may surface anywhere. Today, Kiev is a major supplier of weaponry and military technologies to the global black market, including military product supplies to Latin American drug cartels and training terrorists in Africa.” She also noted its deployment of drone experts to West Asia.
Zakharova concluded by “urg[ing] the World Majority to take a good look at the destabilising activities of the agonising Kiev regime which Western countries use as leverage against Russia and other countries around the world.” Reflecting on her sharp criticisms, she was right to draw attention to Ukraine’s attempted deflection in attempting to frame this mercenary-terrorism scandal as a Russian infowar plot. She also made a powerful point by bringing up Ukraine’s connections with drug cartels and terrorists.
With all due respect to her, her response could have benefited from quoting what Zelensky said in late January per his official website: “Ukraine needs a dedicated, strong intelligence unit capable of operating abroad at a level comparable to the world’s best combat foreign intelligence agencies. Your perspective lies in external operations – not just influence, not just the collection of data or recruitment of agents, but real combat and other asymmetric operations that are essential to protecting Ukraine’s interests.”
The importance of emphasizing this quote from Zelensky’s official website is that it puts to rest the false claim that Ukraine’s mercenary activity across the world is supposedly so-called “Russian propaganda” since its leader is calling on his own intelligence officers to focus on foreign “asymmetric operations”. This in turn lends more credence among observers to Russia’s prior reports about Ukraine’s connections with drug cartels and terrorists, which in turn does the same for the latest mercenary scandal in India.
Nevertheless, Zakharova’s reaction to Ukraine’s official response to India’s arrest of its mercenaries went a long way towards exposing its attempted narrative deception and reminding the world of how Ukraine is now exporting instability across the Global South, with South-Southeast Asia being the latest target. Whether Zelensky approves these operations just for cash even if they sometimes conflict with US interests like this one might, however, or secretly coordinates them with Trump remains to be seen.
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