According to the prosecutors, the members of the group carried out surveillance of journalists, in particular Bulgarian investigative reporter Christo Grozev, who exposed the spies responsible for poisoning Sergei and Yulia Skripal. The ring also spied on Ukrainian soldiers training at a U.S. military base in Germany, in order to locate them when they returned to Ukraine.
“I have never seen anything like this in my more than 20 years in counterterrorism. It was an extremely sophisticated operation,” the metropolitan police’s counterterrorism chief, Commander Dominic Murphy, told PA news agency.
“Really sophisticated devices — the sort of thing you would really expect to see in a spy novel — were found here, in Great Yarmouth and London,” he added.
The trio pleaded not guilty, saying they did not know they were helping Russia. Ivanova was also found guilty of possessing fake passports.
Three other members of the spy ring — Orlin Roussev, Bizer Dzhambazov and Ivan Stoyanov, 32 — previously pleaded guilty.
The six will be sentenced in May.
