Three simultaneous announcements across the world this week brought to life a fascinating Russian story

In an embargoed report from the British government, which we were allowed to publish at midnight overnight on Wednesday, the National Cyber Security Centre unveiled information it said proved that Russia was behind an international online war – targeting elections, metro systems, banks and anti-doping bodies.

And while those allegations – which directed the blame specifically at the Russian military intelligence body, the GRU, also allegedly behind the failed assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal – were explosive and serious enough, more was yet to come.

As I checked in with our Moscow correspondent, Oliver Carroll, on Thursday morning, he said he had received a mysterious invitation to the Ministry of Defence. No details were given, other than to “dress smartly” and turn up an hour and a half before the briefing was due to start. Putin himself might be appearing, we surmised.

From the desk behind me in the newsroom, I heard that in London, our home affairs correspondent, Lizzie Dearden, and our political editor, Joe Watts, had been invited to briefings at the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office, either side of the Moscow press conference.

We then heard there was also due to be a briefing at The Hague. What was going on? What more had been discovered about Russia’s covert operations? And what was Russia going to announce?

From Moscow, Carroll called, saying the phone reception inside the Ministry of Defence was poor, and asking whether he should instead go home to watch it on TV. I asked him to stay, in case the president did arrive and something big was about to happen.

Soon, we learned that the Dutch police had arrested and deported four Russian spies, who were apparently attempting to hack the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

In almost farcical detail, we learned that upon being discovered they had had to abandon a car, leaving behind a receipt for a taxi journey from the GRU building to Moscow Airport. When the US woke up, the Department of Justice announced arrest warrants for seven GRU officers it accuses of hacking. The US defence secretary James Mattis chimed in, saying that Russia had to be held accountable for the attempted attack on the OPCW – which was at the time examining novichok samples from Salisbury.

In the end, the reception was so bad in the Russian Ministry of Defence that we didn’t hear from Carroll until the press conference was over. Nothing to do with the GRU, or any accusations against Russia, it turned out, but instead wild and seemingly unfounded claims that the US had developed a chemical and biological weapons programme in Georgia, on the border with Russia. It looked like a creative attempt to distract from the huge story developing across the globe, with intelligence agencies in the Netherlands, London and Washington DC all simultaneously pointing their fingers at Russia.

And for such a global story, our reporters around the world all brought their insights to the story. Our defence correspondent Kim Sengupta wrote about the evidence trail and how a botched “cleanup” operation helped to unmask a global cyberweb. While our team in the US picked up the American reactions, Carroll wrote an analysis on whether or not the debacle would lead Putin to fall out of love with the GRU, which you can read here.

The best kind of newsroom day is one like Thursday: with a story both important and fascinating, and one in which everyone can draw on their expertise to bring something to the story.

Yours,

Olivia Alabaster

Deputy International Editor