Matthew VanDyke reveals US-based mastermind behind hiring mercenaries in Myanmar

Indian intelligence officials grilling Matthew VanDyke about his training of rebels in Myanmar say the American mercenary has pointed to a shady figure as the mastermind behind his recruitment to help rebels fighting the country's military junta.

VanDyke has told Indian intelligence that Maran Tu Awng, based in Maryland, the US, is the key figure who contacted him and arranged for his team of Ukrainian mercenaries to slip into Myanmar through the northeastern state of Mizoram in late 2025.

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The officials say that VanDyke's group called Sons of Liberty, which provides mercenaries to fight, train and equip rebel groups across the world, has been paid a huge amount—"a few million dollars"—after the American freebooter agreed to do the job.

Man of many wars

VanDyke fought in Libya with the anti-Muammar Gaddafi National Liberation Army and with the anti-Bashar al-Assad rebels in Syria before he moved to Ukraine after the Russian invasion. He trained Ukrainian fighters and planned special operations with them inside Russian-occupied areas.

"It is clear he has trained these rebel groups who were fighting against regimes that the US government tried to topple," said one Indian intelligence official who interrogated VanDyke after his arrest in Kolkata airport in mid-March.

He said VanDyke has even owned up to training Venezuelan rebels opposed to the Leftist regime of the deposed president, Nicolas Maduro, who was abducted by American special forces in early January.

Hired through cut-out

The pattern emerging from VanDyke's candid admissions is clear—he was hired to topple regimes Washington wanted to oust, but the US "deep state" did not deal with him directly. On all occasions, native figures apparently close to the "deep state" were involved in hiring VanDyke's group, so that the American mercenary would never get to know his real handlers. In intelligence parlance, this is a classic "cut-out" driven operation.

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Maran Tu Awng, ethnically from Myanmar’s Kachin tribe but now a US citizen, was the "cut-out" dealing with VanDyke. It was he who farmed out the contract, clearly elaborating the tasks and then arranging everything, from a smooth entry into Myanmar’s conflict zones through northeast India, to smuggling in a huge amount of combat drones in knockdown conditions.

VanDyke claims he has no idea how the drones were smuggled in and insists Maran is the one who took care of that.

"My job was to teach the Myanmar rebels how to reassemble the drones, test them out and fly them to hit military targets with appropriate payloads," he told the Indian intelligence.

He is now in custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) until Friday (March 27), but his arrest, along with that of six Ukrainians, was pulled off by the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) and the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW).

While the Ukrainian embassy has requested Indian authorities to allow consular access for the six Ukrainians, it is not known whether any such request has been made by the US embassy or whether this matter came up for discussion during a recent meeting between the US Ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, and India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

VanDyke seems messianic when he talks, insisting he is a "freedom fighter" and helping all those who seek liberation from autocracies (his group's name speaks volume about that goal). The Ukrainians were picked up by him from the groups he had trained and led into battle against the Russians.

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He has also disclosed that he came to India twice on recce in mid-2025 before going to Myanmar through Mizoram. His group may have been the latest bunch of Western mercenaries entering Myanmar through Mizoram.

UK national Daniel Newey was the first to be apprehended in Aizawl airport in Mizoram in July 2024 with ammunition under his possession. But it is not clear what happened to him after his arrest—whether he is still in Indian custody or has been let off.

Mizoram Chief Minister Pu Lalduhoma referred to his case during his statement in the state Assembly in March last year, when he clearly talked about scores of Western mercenaries, veterans of the Ukraine war, entering Myanmar’s conflict zones. According to him, thousands of Western 'tourists' have come to Mizoram, but very few of them were actually seen in Mizoram's usual tourist spots.

Since Lalduhoma is a former Indian Police Service officer, and since he has been closely connected to the Myanmar-based Chin rebel groups, having played a major role in uniting them on a common platform, he has surely found out about Western mercenaries reaching Myanmar's Chin state and working with rebel groups.

Training in drone warfare, electronic communication

VanDyke has also said that his group first trained the Chin rebels in drone warfare and modern electronic communication, then moved on to train the Arakan Army, the Kachin Independence Army, and the People's Defence Forces in Myanmar's Sagaing Division.

He has said the training session lasted between four and six weeks. His mobile phones are full of photographs of his group training the various rebel armies. The growing capabilities of Myanmar’s rebel armies in using combat drones have helped them defeat the country's military, the Tatmadaw, even in conventional face-offs, which is why all the rebel groups trained by VanDyke's group have seized substantial territory in the last few months.

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Maran Tu Awng's role in dealing with VanDyke's group has served a key purpose—the buck stops at his door, and so long as he does not open up, there is no way of confirming Washington's involvement in fuelling the Myanmar civil war.

Because Maran is a US citizen, it will not be easy to bring him to justice in India. The cut-out helps keep the lid on America's covert war in the Myanmar borderlands to help weaken the Burmese military that is seen in Washington as a Chinese asset.