That would be a pretty terrible escalation in the spy game. There is an uneasy balance where government officials and their families are off limits for any physical harm. That means that CIA officials can live relatively peaceful lives just as FSB agents do.

If you let that genie out of the bottle, it better be a prelude to a winnable war, or you had better be happy to have all your government officials, diplomats, and their families on permanent lockdown.

Some would blame it on the CIA. The more likely perpetrator would always be someone in Russia trying to replace Putin.

Assassinating or targeting political leaders is a war crime. The CIA might have done that - quite a while in the past, mind you - but never against an adversary like Russia. At the very least you would expect a few US politicians to drop dead if there ever were such an attempt.

I do not think the US does political assassinations (I may be utterly wrong here, if so, please post examples!) It does use assassinations against terrorists or quasi-political figures such as Qasem Soleimani, but I doubt that eliminating Putin is even being contemplated here.

Fidel Castro is an obvious example. There were at least 638 (!) failed CIA political assination attempts against him. [0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide...

Lol. Taking out mob hits on Castro, that's just epic!

I totally forgot the "Communist Stooges" category that America had a special loathing for. I'm sure they were a no-holds-barred category!