A group of European nations says Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed by poisoning with a rare and highly lethal toxin derived from South American poison dart frogs, holding the Russia state responsible for his death.
In a joint statement released at the Munich Security Conference, the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and Netherlands said tests on samples from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” a neurotoxin found in poison dart frog skin. The toxin does not occur naturally in Russia, they noted, and has been linked to his death while imprisoned in a Siberian penal colony in 2024.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said only the Russian government “had the means, motive and opportunity” to deploy the toxin against Navalny during his imprisonment, accusing Moscow of a deliberate and unlawful act to silence a prominent critic. The report will be submitted to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for review under international chemical weapons agreements.
Navalny, who spent years exposing corruption and organizing anti-Kremlin protests, died in February 2024 at age 47 while serving a long prison sentence widely seen by Western governments and human rights advocates as politically motivated. In 2020, he survived a previous poisoning with a nerve agent later attributed to Russian operatives; he later returned to Russia and was detained.
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Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has long asserted her husband was murdered, welcomed the findings and renewed calls for accountability. Russian authorities have denied wrongdoing, maintaining Navalny died of natural causes.
The announcement marks a significant escalation in international scrutiny of Russia’s treatment of political opponents and its use of toxic substances, drawing comparisons to earlier poisonings of critics abroad.
