Libya, Ukraine, Myanmar and more: The work-life of arrested American mercenary Matthew VanDyke aligns precisely with US military and strategic ‘interest areas’ on the global map

The arrest of six Ukrainians and an American mercenary by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has unravelled a massive conspiracy brewing along the India-Myanmar border in silence for years. OpIndia earlier analysed how foreign powers like the US, driven by their religious-geopolitical interest,s have been meddling in the political affairs of Myanmar. The arrest of US mercenary Matthew VanDyke in India and his combat career trajectory align precisely with the US foreign policy priority zones on the global map. While conventional warfare may never really become obsolete, battles in the present era are more about technological advancements, the usage of drones in the Russia-Ukraine war has demonstrated this, non-state actors, religious-ideological mercenaries, war veterans, and private contractors. These non-state actors, however, are not always disconnected from the ‘state’. They operate as proxies in distant hotspots, pursuing the furtherance of their country’s strategic interests with tacit backing from the government. The likes of ideologically driven Matthew VanDyke operate as private citizens and NGO founders with combat training, funding and media reach in major strategic hotspots, providing their government with power without accountability. Let’s delve deeper into Matthew VanDyke’s career trajectory to better understand America’s grey-zone proxy model at play. Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Myanmar: Matthew VanDyke found in combat roles wherever the US pursued regime change pressure, ‘counterterrorism’, backed opposition forces Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981, Matthew Aaron VanDyke had been a prisoner-of-war in Libya as he had joined the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi. Before becoming a combatant and trainer in multiple conflicts, VanDyke worked as an adventurer-filmmaker. VanDyke undertook solo cycling expeditions across North Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Syria and Turkey, becoming the only American citizen to cross Libya by motorcycle under dictator Muammar Gaddafi. For some time, VanDyke lived in Iraq, embedded as a war correspondent with American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also completed a 2010 Iraq-Iran-Afghanistan motorbike trek with photographer Daniel Britt. It was footage from these trips that formed the basis of VanDyke’s award-winning documentary, Point and Shoot (2014). VanDyke was detained over 20 times, all this while in Iraq, and was even accused by Iran of espionage. VanDyke’s persistent presence in the Middle East stemmed from his interest in understanding and documenting the 2011 Arab Spring. When the Libyan Civil War broke out, VanDyke joined the rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi in addition to filming it. After fighting alongside rebel troops, he was taken prisoner by Gaddafi’s government and held in solitary confinement for almost six months before making his way back to the front lines. VanDyke was paraded by the Gaddafi regime on state television. He was accused of being a CIA-linked American spy and carrying CIA-provided espionage-related equipment. VanDyke later received a rebel award, ‘Shield of Courage’. Between 2012 and 2014, Matthew VanDyke stayed in Syria’s Aleppo, wherein he filmed an award-winning short documentary “Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution”. This self-financed documentary was made with the motive to garner global support for anti-Assad rebels. A decade later, the Assad regime fell, only to be replaced by an Islamic terrorist, Ahmed Al-Sharaa. In 2015, while in Iraq, VanDyke had published a Facebook post wherein he announced his plans to “raise and train a Christian army to fight” ISIS. The Libyan War formed the ideological basis of VanDyke, who, in 2014, formed the Sons of Liberty International after his friends, American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, were executed by ISIS. Operating as a licensed 501(c)(3) non-profit, SOLI is essentially a private security contracting company. VanDyke was once interviewed by Newsweek magazine, wherein he said, “After they were killed, I thought about what I could do to have an actual impact on the conflict, and that was sort of the catalyst for starting Sons of Liberty International.” SOLI claims to provide supplies, military training, and consulting services at no cost to “vulnerable populations” facing terrorist groups and authoritarian regimes. The Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), an Assyrian Christian group battling ISIS, were trained by SOLI during its first deployments in Iraq. A significant point to note about VanDyke and SOLI is their unwavering support for Ukraine after Russia started the Special Military Operation 2022. Ever since the war broke out, SOLI has been actively training, advising, and supplying the Armed Forces of Ukraine. VanDyke’s deep military and ideological connection with Ukraine, his open admission to having partaken in America’s regime change operation in Venezuela, and now his arrest alongside six Ukrainian nationals in India, the dots are not too blurry to be connected. VanDyke’s social media profile, which is more like a digital diary of his activities in various countries, offers an insight into his deep ideological support rooted in his profound belief in Christianity, for the ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) in Myanmar. Interestingly, VanDyke’s SOLI is also suspected to have been involved in stirring anti-Mullah regime protests in Iran in January 2023. VanDyke’s social media posts from 2019 and 2020 indicate his keen interest in seeing the Iranian Mullah regime fall. In the Russia-Ukraine war that broke out in 2022, Matthew VanDyke enlisted with the Ukrainian armed forces as a combatant. His organisation, SOLI, has provided military training, counselling, supplies, demining, and battlefield innovations like counter-drone tech to Ukrainian forces against Russia. As per a 2022 Newsweek report, VanDyke trained Ukrainian civilians for combat roles, working with the Territorial Defence Forces, a military reserve of the Ukrainian army comprised of civilians. In April 2022, VanDyke started a training programme in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. He told Newsweek about his plans to continue training fighters in Kyiv and in eastern Ukraine, closer to the front lines of Russia’s offensive. “I can bring in 10 or 20 of my guys, and we can train thousands of Ukrainians very quickly and very competently. And we can also train Ukrainians to become trainers themselves, so that Ukraine can tap into all the manpower it has. Because they’re not allowing men of military age to leave the country, they have a reserve of millions of potential soldiers, but they have no way to train them,” VanDyke told Newsweek. Matthew VanDyke explains his organization’s process of recruiting former U.S. Military personnel to train militants across the world. https://t.co/ULsXwrGG7r pic.twitter.com/ud7pndPvHK— Netram Defence Review (@NetramDefence) March 17, 2026 Ever since his 2024 evacuation from Avdeevka, a heavily shelled frontline city in Russia’s Donetsk Republic, VanDyke has avoided the front lines though not abandoned the covert operations. In 2025, VanDyke, by his own admission, ran covert operations with a Venezuelan rebel commander since the year 2019 to topple Nicolás Maduro’s regime and ‘restore’ democracy in the typical American style. “I’ve been running covert operations with a Venezuelan rebel commander since 2019. You’ve read about our missions in the media, such as Operation Aurora, but nobody knew who did it. The Venezuelan team and I agreed to reveal this today. We’ll continue until #Venezuela is free,” he wrote. Overall, VanDyke’s footprints have been traced in Ukraine, Venezuela, the Philippines, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Mauritania, Morocco, Jordan, Turkey, Spain and now towards Myanmar, through India. In all these countries, America has had significant foreign policy interests, with Ukraine being the highest priority theatre. Days before his arrest by the NIA, VanDyke had expressed disappointment over the eventualities of America’s regime change operations in Iran and Venezuela. In an X post, VanDyke lamented that in Iran, Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei got replaced by his even more hardline son, while in Venezuela, “Maduro replaced by his more competent VP.” VanDyke’s disdain for foreign regimes he deems hostile and the lengths he would want to pursue to eradicate them can be understood the from his statement, “Just as weak antibiotics cause resistant and stronger bacteria, weak military action causes resistant and stronger regimes. When you strike a regime, you must kill it.” Reports say that Matthew VanDyke failed a CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) polygraph many years ago. VanDyke is also reported to have denied having links with the CIA; however, it is not too unlikely that a CIA asset would deny having links with the American intelligence agency, especially when his operations in distant but strategically significant hotspots from the American point of view. VanDyke’s campaign of covert operations in various countries ongoing for over a decade, has been halted by India with his arrest. VanDyke and the six Ukrainian nationals have been booked under Section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for criminal conspiracy to commit illegal or terrorist acts. The NIA informed the court, while seeking custody of the arrested foreign nationals, that the accused arrived in India on a valid visa, but then they entered the protected area in Mizoram illegally. Eventually, the accused persons entered Myanmar and contacted ethnic war groups hostile to India. The NIA further stated that the arrested Ukrainians and VanDyke were giving training to ethnic armed groups, which have links with insurgent groups in India. As per the NIA, these ethnic armed groups were “supporting some proscribed Indian Insurgent Groups by way of supplying weapons and other terrorist hardware and training them”.  VanDyke and his accomplices brought a huge consignment of drones from Europe through India. The investigation revealed that all the accused had entered India on valid visas but reached Mizoram without the mandatory Restricted Area Permit (RAP). What brought VanDyke to Myanmar also aligns exactly with the American interests. Russia and China have been perpetual supporters of the Myanmar military junta, led by Min Aung Hlaing. The junta, Tatmadaw, has also reciprocated the Russia-China backing. Tatmadaw supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine while Moscow had supplied Naypyidaw with fighter jets, drones, and surveillance devices that the Tatmadaw uses against insurgent groups. Russia has also been a reliable oil supplier to Myanmar. It is, thus, in Ukraine’s interest to drain Russia of its resources and weaken Moscow’s allies. Earlier, the US Congress passed the  Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability Act or simply the BURMA Act. The act was aimed at providing “technical and non-lethal assistance” to “pro-democracy organisations”, including the People’s Defence Force (PDF) and EAOs. Here, the term “non-lethal” does not mean that the US committed not to provide military assistance to anti-junta forces in Myanmar. The Act sufficiently covered a range of military assistance short of arms and ammunition, body armour, uniforms, radars, and medical equipment, etc. The US also has plans to establish a “massive supply dump” in Bangladesh, to back anti-junta military operations in Myanmar by supplying arms and logistic support to insurgent groups such as the Arakan Army and Chin National Front. Since it is not always feasible to deploy conventional forces, bomb the hell out of a country to topple a hostile regime, as exemplified by what is happening in Iran so far, the US covertly deploys its trained assets and extends financial and logistical support to them to act as a force multiplier in strategic hotspots like Myanmar. From Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Venezuela, to now Myanmar, VanDyke has been operating in the ‘grey zone’ pursuing American geopolitical interests under the guise of his state-ideology “combatting authoritarianism”, without official fingerprints. The locations chosen by VanDyke and the timings have never been random; they track America’s adversaries, be it Russia, ISIS, or Iraq, or hotspots on the global map where the White House seeks leverage. Western media made a hero out of Matthew VanDyke Over the past 15 years, Matthew VanDyke has received massive media coverage. Despite VanDyke essentially being an ideological mercenary, his appearances in media headlines and interviews evolved from a sympathetic human-interest story to romanticised idealism, elevation to the status of ‘freedom fighter’ in West-aligned conflicts. Had he been from any country hostile to the West, the same legacy media would have called him a terrorist. Legacy media outlets, including the New York Times, USA Today, the Baltimore Sun, and MSNBC., among others, portrayed VanDyke as a colourful ‘freedom fighter’ who fills gaps where governments fail. Similarly, several conservative Christian media outlets also glorified VanDyke in their reportage. VanDyke had told PRNewswire in 2015 that his solitary confinement in Libya deepened his Christian faith. Vice magazine interviewed VanDyke in 2015 and addressed him as a “freedom fighter’. In 2016, the History Channel did a proper web series titled “The Freedom Fighter” on Matthew VanDyke, glorifying his combat shenanigans and calling him an ‘International Security Expert’. In more recent years, Newsweek magazine described VanDyke as an “experienced former POW”. Overall, the Western legacy media as well as Christian media outlets remained consistently fascinated by Matthew VanDyke’s dramatic career arc, describing his journey as that of a ‘traveller’ ‘, journalist’, ‘filmmaker’ who eventually became a ‘combatant’, ‘professionalised private operator’ but never labelled what he truly has been, an ideological Christian mercenary. The media coverage and his own sophisticated social media presence helped Matthew VanDyke gain legitimacy and even fundraising, turning his personal dream of working with the CIA and raising a Christian army into a durable public brand. All was going smoothly until VanDyke picked India as the gateway for his Myanmar mission of backing Christian armed groups against the Russia-China-backed Tatmadaw. It is, however, pertinent to understand that ideological mercenaries like VanDyke are not unique to America or Ukraine, where a neo-Nazi problem persists, but countries like China also have their mercenaries furthering its interests in countries like Sudan. In fact, in Myanmar’s case, if there are allegations that the US is trying carve out a separate Kuki-Chin Christian nation comprising areas from India’s Northeast, Bangladesh and Myanmar, speculations are also rife that China might be planning to create a security buffer, it not a separate nation in the WESEA (Western South East Asia) region, which comprises parts of India’s Northeast and Western Myanmar.