How much does a clandestine international assassination cost? Why would anyone bother?

I suspect you're being downvoted because of the below. Spoiler alert: dictators don't follow the same value calculus as normal people for when they should "bother".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvi... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal

Sure, I'm aware of those cases - but I am not a former Russian military intelligence officer, and I'll wager that nobody else participating in this thread is, either. There is no conceivable reason that any dictator, anywhere in the world, should care enough about any of us to bother spending the enormous amount of money and presumably political capital that would be involved in executing such an attack, so why should we worry about it?

That's obviously true (most people will not be targeted). But there's plenty more cases than the last few prominent ones. There are also low level cases that are not reported globally, only in local news.

It's ranging from secret services trying to use people to bomb planes and public places, to dissidents active abroad being threatened, beaten up or assassinated by suspected secret services of their origin countries. On source of such activity is Assad's regime in Syria.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190119-is-assad-trying-t...

It's uncommon, unlikely, but not that unique.