Five European governments on Saturday announced their investigation determined Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned, contradicting Moscow’s claims he died of natural causes.
The United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands said they “are confident” Navalny was poisoned by epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America. Officials said in a joint statement that they came to the conclusion based on analyses of samples from Navalny, who died in February 2024 while imprisoned at an Arctic penal colony in Russia.
The development appears to confirm accusations from Navalny’s widow and others that he was murdered by Russian authorities seeking to eliminate a threat to President Vladimir Putin. In a speech reacting to her husband’s death during the Munich Security Conference two years ago, when his death was announced, Yulia Navalny called for Putin “to be punished.”
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This week, Yulia Navalny was again attending the Munich conference when the news broke that European leaders formally attributed her husband’s death to poison, a conclusion she said last fall was determined by two lab analyses. U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper met with the widow on the sidelines of the German conference on Saturday, saying that “only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia.”
“Today, beside his widow, the U.K. is shining a light on the Kremlin’s barbaric plot to silence his voice. Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this form of poison the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition,” Cooper said.
Yulia Navalny said in a statement to X that she “was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned.”
“Now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon,” she said. “I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the findings were proof that Putin is “prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to remain in power.”
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“France pays tribute to this opposition figure, killed for his fight in favour of a free and democratic Russia,” he said in a post to X.
Navalny was one of Putin’s fiercest critics before he was barred from running against the incumbent in 2018 and sent to a Russian prison camp. Russia has said Navalny became ill after a scheduled walk at the remote prison, telling his widow that he died from heart problems.
