It was almost midnight when a truck driver resting in his cab heard the crackling of flames at a warehouse in east London storing equipment for Ukraine. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and leapt out, but realized the blaze was too big and retreated.

When police arrived, they banged on the doors of a nearby apartment building, shouting at residents to evacuate. Parents grabbed children and ran into the street.

About 30 minutes after the fire started, Dylan Earl, a British man who admitted to organizing the arson, received a message from a man U.K. authorities say was his Russian handler.

“Excellent,” it read in Russian.

In July, a British court found three men guilty of arson in the March 2024 plot that prosecutors said was masterminded by Russia’s intelligence services — part of a campa

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