VIENNA — Austrian authorities said Monday that they uncovered a Russian-steered campaign aimed at spreading disinformation about Ukraine following the detention in December of a Bulgarian woman accused of spying for Russia.

Austria’s domestic intelligence agency unearthed evidence of the operation as it analyzed devices found in a search of the woman’s home, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. It said the investigation showed that a few weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a cell working for Russian intelligence was set up and planned a large-scale disinformation campaign in German-speaking countries, particularly Austria.

The group was active online but also used stickers and graffiti with content such as far-right symbols and nationalist statements meant to look like pro-Ukrainian activists were responsible for them, according to the Interior Ministry.

The Bulgarian suspect, whose name wasn’t released, is believed to have played a significant role in the effort and acted as an intelligence contact, the ministry said, adding that she has admitted working for the cell, particularly in 2022.

A year ago, Austria’s biggest espionage scandal in decades erupted with the arrest of a former Austrian intelligence officer, who was accused among other things of handing over cellphone data of former high-ranking Austrian officials to Russian intelligence and helping plot a burglary at a prominent journalist’s apartment.

The ex-officer, who was later released from custody, is suspected of having provided sensitive information to Jan Marsalek, a fugitive fellow Austrian wanted on suspicion of fraud since the collapse in 2020 of German payment company Wirecard, where he was the chief operating officer. The arrest warrant said chat messages provided by British authorities link Marsalek directly to Russia’s FSB intelligence agency.

Russia said on Monday it was expelling two British diplomats based at the embassy in Moscow over spying allegations.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement quoted by the state news agency RIA Novosti that the two diplomats had provided false personal data while seeking permission to enter the country and had engaged in alleged intelligence and subversive activities that threatened Russia’s security. It didn’t offer any evidence.

According to the RIA Novosti report, a decision has been made to revoke the diplomats’ accreditations and they have been ordered to leave Russia within two weeks. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a separate statement that it summoned a British embassy official. “Moscow will not tolerate the activities of undeclared British intelligence officers on Russian territory,” it said.

There was no immediate response from the U.K. authorities.

The FSB last year accused seven British diplomats of spying. Six expulsions were announced in September, and one more in November. The U.K. called the moves at the time “baseless.” The expulsions came amid soaring tensions over the war in Ukraine and after London decided to revoke the credentials of an attaché at the Russian Embassy and limit Moscow’s diplomatic activities in Britain.

Last month, London expelled a Russian diplomat in response to the November expulsion.

In May 2024, the U.K. expelled Russia’s defense attaché in London, alleging he was an undeclared intelligence officer, and it closed several Russian diplomatic properties in Britain that it said were being used for spying. Days later Russia reciprocated and expelled Britain’s defense attaché.

Expulsions of diplomats — both Western envoys working in Russia and Russians in the West — have become increasingly common since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In 2023, the Russian news outlet RBC said Western countries and Japan had expelled a total of 670 Russian diplomats between the start of 2022 and October 2023, while Moscow responded by expelling 346 diplomats. According to RBC, that was more than in the previous 20 years combined.

WASHINGTON — A ninth U.S. telecoms firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said Friday.

Biden administration officials said this month that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon.

But Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, told reporters Friday that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.

The update from Neuberger is the latest development in a massive hacking operation that has alarmed national security officials, exposed cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the private sector and laid bare China’s hacking sophistication.

The hackers compromised the networks of telecommunications companies to obtain customer call records and gain access to the private communications of “a limited number of individuals.” Though the FBI has not publicly identified any of the victims, officials believe senior U.S. government officials and prominent political figures are among those whose whose communications were accessed.

Neuberger said officials did not yet have a precise sense how many Americans overall were affected by Salt Typhoon, in part because the Chinese were careful about their techniques, but a “large number” were in the Washington-Virginia area.

Officials believe the goal of the hackers was to identify who owned the phones and, if they were “government targets of interest,” spy on their texts and phone calls, she said.

The FBI said most of the people targeted by the hackers are “primarily involved in government or political activity.”

Neuberger said the episode highlighted the need for required cybersecurity practices in the telecommunications industry, something the Federal Communications Commission is to take up at a meeting next month.

“We know that voluntary cyber security practices are inadequate to protect against China, Russia and Iran hacking of our critical infrastructure,” she said.

The Chinese government has denied responsibility for the hacking.

MOSCOW — A Russian-born U.S. citizen already imprisoned in Russia on a bribery conviction has been handed a second 15-year jail term for espionage, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday.

A Moscow court brought espionage charges against Gene Spector in August 2023, although details surrounding the case were not made public.

Spector, formerly an executive at a medical equipment company in Russia, was previously sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in September 2022 for enabling bribes to an aide of former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. The aide, Anastasia Alekseyeva, was sentenced to 12 years in April for taking bribes of two expensive overseas vacation trips.

Dvorkovich was a deputy prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev in 2012-2018. He is currently head of the international chess federation FIDE.