Alexei Navalny was poisoned by Russia with dart frog toxin, European nations say
Jill Lawless
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and deadly toxin found in the skin of a poison dart frog, five European countries said on Saturday (local time).
The foreign ministries of England, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said that analyzes of samples taken from Navalny’s body in European laboratories “unequivocally confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” It was stated that the neurotoxin secreted by arrow frogs in South America does not occur naturally in Russia.
The joint statement included the following statements: “Russia had the means, purpose and opportunity to apply this poison.”
The five countries said they would report Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for violating the Chemical Weapons Convention. There is no statement from the organization yet.
Navalny, who fought against official corruption and organized mass anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year prison sentence that he believed was politically motivated.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said, “Russia saw Navalny as a threat.” “By using this kind of poison, the Russian state has demonstrated the vile tools at its disposal and its great fear of political opposition.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote in X that the poisoning of Navalny showed that “Vladimir Putin is ready to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.”
The assessment by European countries came as Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany and just before the second anniversary of Navalny’s death.
She said last year two independent laboratories determined her husband had been poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. Russian officials vehemently denied the accusation.
Navalnaya said on Saturday that she had been sure “from day one, but now there is proof” that her husband was poisoned.
“Putin killed Alexei with a chemical weapon,” he wrote, and also branded Putin “a murderer who must be held accountable.”
Russian officials said that the politician fell ill after the march and died of natural causes.
Epibatidine occurs naturally in dart frogs in the wild and can also be produced in a laboratory. European scientists suspect this is also the case with the substance used on Navalny. It acts on the body in a manner similar to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, slow heart rate, and ultimately death.
European officials said they were highly confident in the assessment that Navalny died from epibatidine poisoning. Asked why results were taking so long, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said it was a “complex process.”
“No one, except Putin’s supporters, can say in detail what happened in the Russian penal colony on February 16, 2024. But it is clear that the Russian authorities had the opportunity, motive and means to poison Navalny,” Wadephul said.
Navalny was the target of a previous poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020, an attack he blamed on the Kremlin and has always denied involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. He returned to Russia five months later, where he was immediately arrested and spent the last three years of his life in prison.
Britain has accused Russia of repeatedly violating international bans on chemical and biological weapons. He accuses the Kremlin of carrying out an attack in Salisbury, England, in 2018, using the nerve agent Novichok against former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal. Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman named Dawn Sturgess died after coming across a discarded vial containing traces of a nerve agent.
A British investigation concluded that the attack “must have been authorized by President Putin at the highest level.”
The Kremlin has denied involvement. Russia also denied the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent critical of the Kremlin who died in London in 2006 after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. The British investigation concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko and that Putin “probably approved” the operation.
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