Listen to this article
Estimated 2 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Five European nations say Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin, and they’re blaming the Russian state for the attack.
The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said Saturday that analysis of samples from Navalny, who died two years ago, “have conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” It is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America.
The countries said that “only the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law” to carry out the attack. They said they were reporting Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024. He was serving a 19-year sentence that he believed was politically motivated.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before his death. Navalnaya has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death, a charge Russian officials have vehemently denied.
