Russian opposition figure Navalny killed by toxin found in poison dart frogs

By Catherine Nicholls, CNN

(CNN) — Russian opposition figure and outspoken Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, who died two years ago, was killed while in prison by a lethal toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America, five European countries have said in a statement Saturday.

Analyses of samples taken from Navalny’s body have “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” the statement said. The substance is not found naturally in Russia, it added.

The five countries – UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands – said Moscow “had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison” to Navalny while he was held in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

Only “the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law” to contribute to Navalny’s death, they added.

Russian officials have repeatedly denied being responsible for Navalny’s death and on Saturday Russian news agency TASS quoted the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as dismissing the frog poison claim as “propaganda.”

The Russian Embassy to the United Kingdom dismissed the findings as a “political pageant.” “As with the Skripal case there are strident accusations, media hysteria, zero evidence, and a host of questions the accusers would rather ignore,” a statement from the embassy said.

The embassy claimed that the intention was to “revive a waning anti-Russian fervour within Western societies. If there is no pretext, one is laboriously invented.”

CNN has reached out to the Kremlin for comment.

The announcement came during the Munich Security Conference in Germany, during which Navalny’s death was announced in 2024.

At the event two years ago, Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya came on stage at the conference in tears and received a standing ovation.

Speaking at the same security conference on Saturday, Navalnaya said: “Two years ago, I was here in Munich. It was the most horrible day (of) my life. I came to the stage and I said that my husband, Alexey Navalny, was poisoned.”

In a post on X earlier in the day, Navalnaya said that she “was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: (Russian President Vladimir) Putin killed (Alexey) with chemical weapon.”

“I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth,” she said, adding: “Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”

When Navalny died, the Russian prison service said that he had “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.

He had been imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony since returning to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent.

A joint investigation by CNN and the group Bellingcat implicated the Russian Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning. It found that the FSB had formed an elite team specializing in nerve agents that trailed Navalny for more than three years.

Russia denied involvement then, too, with Putin saying at the time that if the Russian security service had wanted to kill Navalny, it “would have finished” the job.

Navalny, who had organized anti-government street protests and used his blog and social media to expose alleged corruption in the Kremlin and in Russian business, was viewed as one of the most serious threats to Putin before his death.

In a 2018 interview with CNN, he said that he had a “clear understanding” of the risks involved in taking on the government.

“But I’m not afraid and I’m not going to give up on what I’m going to do. I won’t give up on my country. I won’t give up on my civil rights. I won’t give up on uniting those around me who believe in the same ideals as me. And there are quite a lot of people like that in Russia,” he said.

In a statement released on Saturday, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said that “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.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was asked at the Munich Security Conference if he feared that Putin would use the same toxins against him. “I don’t think about myself because we have already lost a large number of people. I am one of many Ukrainian citizens who continue to fight,” Zelensky said. “I cannot think about Vladimir Putin, about his poisons or toxins that he has or had.”

The five countries said in their joint statement that they have written to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons about what they called a “Russian breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

CNN’s Sebastian Shukla, Anna Chernova and Christian Edwards, Svitlana Vlasova and Moriah Thomas contributed to this reporting.

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