The governments of five European countries on February 14 released a statement saying that they are confident that the Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin not found naturally in Russia — a poisoning that led to his death in a Russian prison two years ago.
The UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands made their conclusion based on analyses of samples from Navalny that confirm the presence of epibatidine — a toxin derived from poison dart frogs in South America — that is known to cause paralysis and respiratory arrest.
In the joint statement, the five capitals note that “Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive, and opportunity to administer this poison to him.”
It also adds that “these latest findings once again underline the need to hold Russia accountable for its repeated violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and, in this instance, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.”
Navalny’s Widow Responds
In response to the statement, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, tweeted that “I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Aleksei with a chemical weapon. I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out [for] over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
RFE/RL reached out to Navalnaya’s press team for further comment but the request was declined.
Navalnaya has always rejected the official Russian autopsy report that stated that hypertension and other diseases caused a heartbeat disorder that led to Navalny’s demise and was instrumental in getting biological samples smuggled out from Russia to other European countries.
Navalny was a longtime anti-corruption fighter and Russia’s most prominent opposition politician for over a decade. At the time of his death in a prison north of the Arctic Circle, Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence on an extremism conviction that he and his supporters say was politically motivated and revenge for his anti-Kremlin activism.
He had been behind bars since January 2021, when he was arrested upon returning to Russia after recovering in Germany from a nerve-agent poisoning that he said was a state-sponsored assassination attempt carried out by Russian security agents and approved by Putin.
