Russia poisoned Alexei Navalny with dart frog toxin, European nations say | World News
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and deadly toxin found in the skin of poison dart frogs, five European countries announced on Saturday.
The foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said that analysis of samples taken from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” It is a neurotoxin found in the skin of South American frogs and is not found naturally in Russia, they said.
“Russia had the means, motivation and opportunity to administer this poison,” a joint statement said. The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The announcement came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, ahead of the second anniversary of Navalny’s death.
Navalny, who fought against official corruption and staged massive protests against the Kremlin as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence he believed to be politically motivated.
“Russia viewed Navalny as a threat,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “By using this form of poison, the Russian state has demonstrated the despicable tools at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition.” Navalny’s poisoning shows “that Vladimir Putin is ready to use biological weapons against his own people to stay in power,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X.
Navalny’s widow said last year that two independent laboratories had discovered that her husband had been poisoned shortly before his death. She repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.
Yulia Navalnaya said Saturday that she was “certain from the first day” that her husband had been poisoned, “but now there is proof.” “Putin killed Alexei with a chemical weapon,” she wrote on the social network X. She said Putin was “a murderer” who “must be held accountable.” Russian authorities said the politician fell ill after a walk and died of natural causes.
Epibatidine is found naturally in frogs in the wild and can also be made in the laboratory, which European scientists suspect is the case with the substance used on Navalny. It acts on the body in the same way as nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, seizures, seizures, slowed heart rate, and ultimately death.
Navalny had already been the target of poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent, during an attack that he blamed on the Kremlin, which has always denied any involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.
The United Kingdom has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. He accuses the Kremlin of having carried out an attack in the English city of Salisbury in 2018, targeting a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok.
Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after discovering an abandoned bottle containing traces of the nerve agent.
A British investigation concluded that the attack “must have been authorized at the highest level, by President Putin.” The Kremlin has denied any involvement. Russia has 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 killed Litvinenko and that Putin “probably approved” the operation.
