At the height of the cold war, there was an unspoken agreement between Eastern and Western intelligence Services, that killing each others agents in the field was a waste and nobody wanted a hot war between the KGB and the CIA or MI-6 for example.
That's why both sides worried more about collapsing spy rings then killing agents.
A hot war was counter productive to the actual jobs of these agencies which was gathering intelligence and influencing politics and policy.
The only way that the UK for example could really retaliate would be to start killing GRU agents.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
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