Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attends a rally in support of political prisoners on Prospekt Sakharova Street in Moscow, Russia on September 29, 2019.
- Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory results conclusively confirmed that opposition leader Alexey Navalny was killed with epibatidine, a deadly poison.
- The countries believe that Russia had “the means, motive and opportunity” to administer the poison.
- This follows Navalny’s previous poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020 and is part of a broader pattern of alleged Russian poisonings.
Five European countries – Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands – have accused Russia of poisoning and killing opposition leader Alexey Navalny in 2024 based on laboratory results of a sample taken from his body.
The five governments said in a statement on Saturday that tissue samples “definitively” confirmed the deadly poison epibatidine. The poison is found in wild dart frogs from South America.
“Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands are confident that Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a deadly poison,” said the statement issued at the Munich Security Conference.
Russia had “the means, motive and opportunity to deliver this poison,” Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office added in a statement.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told state news agency RIA Novosti that she will comment once the test results are presented publicly – something she said has not yet happened.
READ | UN expert calls for urgent medical care for Russia’s jailed Navalny
The five countries said they are reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organization.
Navalny, who waged a crusade against official corruption and organized anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest enemy, died on Feb. 16, 2024, in a penal colony in the Arctic while serving a 19-year prison sentence that he called politically motivated.
Epibatidine occurs naturally in dart frogs and can also be manufactured in a laboratory, something European scientists suspect was the case in Navalny’s alleged poisoning.
The poison causes shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures and a slowed heart rate and can be fatal on contact.
Police officers detain anti-corruption activist and opposition figure Alexei Navalny during an opposition rally on March 26, 2017 in Moscow.Evgeny Feldman for Alexey Navalny’s campaign / Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The five countries said Russia must be held accountable for its “repeated violations” of the treaty.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper met Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, at the Munich Security Conference. She said the new findings “shed light on the Kremlin’s barbaric plot to silence its voice.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot wrote on X that the alleged poisoning shows that “Vladimir Putin is willing to use biological weapons against his own people to stay in power.”
The Russian government has repeatedly denied any involvement in Navalny’s death. Authorities said he became ill after a hike and died of natural causes.
“As soon as there are test results – as soon as there are formulas for the substances – there will be comments. Without this, all conversations and statements are just information leaks designed to divert attention from the West’s pressing problems,” Zakharova said.
‘Scientifically proven fact’?
It is unclear how the samples from Navalny’s body were obtained or where they were assessed. Cooper told reporters that “British scientists have been working with our European partners to uncover the truth” about Navalny’s death.
Navalnaya said her husband’s “murder” is now a “scientifically proven fact.”
“Two years ago I came here on stage and said it was Vladimir Putin who killed my husband,” Navalnaya said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
Navalnaya added:
Of course I was sure it was a murder, but then it was just words. But today these words have become scientifically proven facts.
Navalny was the previous target of a nerve agent poisoning in 2020, which he blamed on the Kremlin.
He was flown to Germany for treatment, and when he returned to Russia five months later, he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the remaining three years of his life.
Britain launched a public inquiry in 2018 into the poisoning in Britain of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal. Last year it was concluded that Putin must have ordered the nerve agent attack on Novichok. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
Russia also denied the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006 after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. A British investigation concluded that two Russian agents had murdered Litvinenko.
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