"With regard to traitors, they will kick the bucket on their own, I assure you... Whatever thirty pieces of silver those people may have gotten, they will stick in their throat" - Vladimir Putin, 2010.
Before dashing back to present this evening's Newsnight in London, BBC diplomatic and defence editor Mark Urban joined us to talk about the explosive story of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and the new spy war between the West and Russia.
Urban interviewed Skripal in the months before the poisoning and explained how Skripal’s life has come to define the new spy war between Russia and the West.
"When we see something like Salisbury, we think of thrillers and spy fiction. It is a remarkable story, but it is also one about the reality of ruined lives" he said. "What the Skripal affair marks is a new willingness to take risks that seems greater than that we saw in the Cold War."
Audio of Hay Festival Winter Weekend sessions will be online shortly on Hay Player.