Since September 11th the US and UK have showed they're not even willing and able to organise the covert manufacture of nerve agents to "discover" in Iraq to avoid many leading political figures being permanently discredited when nothing was found, never mind manufacturing and using nerve agents to bump off a couple of Russians in a public place in Britain for no obvious political benefit.
If you genuinely think the UK needed a couple more dead Russian dissidents (and pretty unsympathetic ones at that) to justify stricter sanctions on Russia, you really, really don't understand the relevant politics.
Russia has very little to gain and lots to lose from this shit move. This is not a move that you make on the international checkerboard. Stop taking us for idiots.
Russia has been doing this for a long time, for example Trotsky was assassinated in 1940 [1]. The goal is to remind the "traitors" that the punishment can come at any time and make them live in fear.
It reminds me how some religious communities go after the people who don't follow their rules even after they flee to other country [2].
Last time a Russian double agent died from a poisoning in the UK, the person the victim named as his murderer on his deathbed was elected to the Russian State Duma. Stop taking us for idiots.
Yeah, the Russian intelligence agent known to met the suspect shortly before the poisoning and been present at other areas where polonium was found, known to have rushed back to Russia to have a medical test, and then been named by the suspect as the man handing out the fateful teacup is definitely an unlikely candidate to have carried out the poisoning, and the reason he's since sat in the State Duma and hosted a TV show called "Traitors" is because the Russian state apparatus is completely convinced he was actually a friend and ally of defector Litvinenko and not the man who bumped him off.
Nobody is stupid enough to honestly believe that. Nobody. Jog on troll.
If you genuinely think the UK needed a couple more dead Russian dissidents (and pretty unsympathetic ones at that) to justify stricter sanctions on Russia, you really, really don't understand the relevant politics.