Not Russians, probably. If I had to guess, either some Soros type, or US Intel leadership that Obama installed, looking to send a message.
It may not have been Polonium, but rather some other Alpha emitter. According to Stone his doctors said a radiological poison like Polonium. There are a few used in the medical field that could probably be swapped with something else without notice from one university research project or another, and the change in trial results might not be noticed.
I would guess they thought it was a GI infection in the hospital, and by the time they came around to realize it was something more, all that was left was the radiographs which probably showed clouding like Litvinenko had.
Interestingly, if true, as with Litvinenko, they underestimated the necessary dose on the first go around. It makes you wonder if there is some text or established figure both the Russians and whoever hit Stone used to try and calculate a lethal dose, but that text is off, or the figure doesn’t translate to field use somehow.
Either way I hope President Trump’s personal security is checking all of his food for Alpha emissions.
Very scary times.
Hard to believe it was only reported in the Daily Mail.
In Litvinenko's case, his assassins overestimated the incompetence of the UK NHS and underestimated the competence of Scotland Yard. As for the dose, they got that about right. Enough to kill him for sure, but not quickly.
Litvinenko's docs didn't figure out what was really wrong with him until a couple of days before he died. That was the assassins' first failure. He was supposed to have died of a horrible natural disease that, somehow, only traitors to the FSB succumb to. Not something the NHS could even diagnose, never mind treat, successfully.
However, once the NHS established 210Po as the cause of Litvinenko's death, the British police swung into action and traced the polonium all over London and across the continent back to Mother Russia.
So, the assassins get a 50%. They got their man. But not without being identified as the culprits.
The objective, obviously, was for Litvinenko to contract a super-aggressive cancer and die, everyone whispering about the supernatural force that killed him and who might command said force. But the end-result was merely an object lesson in how you kill a political enemy in an especially interesting way and still get caught doing it.