What interesting life we live now. You can just watch the news and feel like you’re in the middle of some cool plotted tv series. Deep history, inriguing secrets, sharp moves, old hatred. It’s also along the modern trend of being sarcastic and a little cynical.

Except that it is our real life and it clearly shown to not be like any tv show before.

Yeah, that's the TV line.

This guy lived quietly in the UK and had no "Putin's beans" to spill. He did blow cover of several hundred Russian agents, but he did time for that in Russia and then he was exchanged. It is possible it was a long-delayed payback from the GRU, but, again, there is no reason for it to be made that publicly. He could've choked on a pound coin and everyone who needed to know would've gotten the message. But the way it stands, the only discernible message here is "don't do any more spy exchanges with Russia".

>Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian spy poisoned in Britain with a powerful nerve agent, appears to have been working in recent years with intelligence officers in Spain, a country locked in a pitched battle with Russian organized crime groups, some with ties to the Russian government.

>Rather than merely living an isolated life in retirement, Mr. Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, continued to provide briefings to spies in the Czech Republic and Estonia, according to European officials. Now, it appears he was also active in Spain.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/world/europe/skripal-pois...

How interesting. This definitely puts things in a different perspective.

> that's the TV line

As well as the well-substantiated conclusion of several international investigations. Same reasoning for Litvinenko’s polonium tea and North Korea’s nerve agent assassination.

That reasoning in this context doesn't make any sense. That's the problem.

Ok then. Who else had the motivation to ostentatiously kill him using a weapon only available to state actors?

Another state actor? Though in the light of [1] it'd seem far less probable.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17987031

Indeed. Russia is the only plausible candidate.