The US is generally too smart, and powerful enough, to not get its/our hands dirty. We need plausible deniability at least.
Even when we commit the most severe war crimes (Iraq), nobody can do anything anyways -- but we don't want to give up that soft power when we can so easily get other folks to do our bidding.
If all else fails, we send in the CIA.
Israel does a lot for us, but in this case they were probably too close to Russia.
Who else could have enough sophistication to make it happen? UK would be a good choice, and they made a strategic decision long ago to stick with the US no matter what -- e.g. Iraq.
I find it hard to believe the UK would be stupid enough to do it directly, as opposed to some hired third party, at least, but you never know. They were already out of the EU, so maybe this was a parting gift to the Continent for all the Brexit-induced suffering.
If the UK did do it, it would be more likely a parting gift for the fact that Putin sent military personnel into the UK to assassinate [1] a naturalized Briton living there, not caring about others that might have been involved, and using poison that would definitely be traced back to Russia as a final "fuck you".
I doubt the UK did anything, personally. But Russia is seriously on the UK's shit-list, so if they did, it'd be understandable.
i don't think that's very plausible -- because it would represent a massive escalation, would put whoever did it in serious legal jeopardy, and would severely hurt UK/EU relations -- and probably a bunch more reasons.
it's such a massive disaster that it could really only be done with tacit US approval, but probably a lot more than that.
given the EU's capitulation to US leadership/domination, whoever did it is probably safe.
still, i think of all the suffering that may be caused by the act...
the US has proven over decades that we'll do anything -- including the unthinkable -- to maintain our global dominance. now, Russia has just demonstrated their own willingness to go way too far -- with the invasion of Ukraine and all the crimes after. has yet another country taken a step towards Crazytown and proven that they too are willing to go way too far?
I'll be waiting for the 'fact checkers' to spin up 'what Biden actually meant' to completely deny this involvement.