The Rules of the Spy Game Are No Longer Clear

British police confirmed on Wednesday that the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who are fighting for their lives, had been poisoned by a nerve agent. Police didn't name the substance and knowing what hit the pair isn't the same as understanding who did it. It may be too early to talk of a Russian "declaration of war," as some have done. But the attack raises grave questions.

Understandably,the theory most popular in the U.K. media at the moment is that it was Russian spies who poisoned the former military intelligence colonel and his daughter, Yulia. This would surprise no one. That Russian intelligence is back in the business of executing traitors has been known since the case of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with polonium in 2006. If the Skripal situation is part of this practice, two things are striking about it because they would suggest that Russia has blown up unwritten spy game rules from which it has repeatedly benefited: first, that Skripal had been "off the board" after being tried, convicted and traded to the U.K. and, second, that his daughter had apparently been targeted along with him.