![\"Yulia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/yulia-navalnaya-human-rights-activist-and-wife-of-russian-op-ONI6HIHZT5H5LDNF5GZULF6OOI.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRussian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and lethal toxin found in the skin of poison dart frogs, five European countries say.<\/p>\n
The foreign ministries of the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said analysis in European labs of samples taken from Navalny’s body \u201cconclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.\u201d <\/p>\n
The neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America is not found naturally in Russia, they said.<\/p>\n
A joint statement said: \u201cRussia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yulia Navalnaya, human rights activist and wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, gives a press statement on the death and circumstances of her husband’s death on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
The five countries said they were reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. There was no immediate comment from the organiSation.<\/p>\n
Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as president Vladimir Putin\u2019s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia saw Navalny as a threat,\u201d British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBy 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
French Foreign Minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot wrote on X that the poisoning of Navalny shows \u201cthat Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power.\u201d<\/p>\n
The European nations\u2019 assessment came as Navalny\u2019s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, attended the Munich Security Conference in Germany, and just before the second anniversary of Navalny\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
She said last year that two independent labs had found that her husband was poisoned shortly before he died. She has repeatedly blamed Putin for her husband’s death. <\/p>\n
Russian officials have vehemently denied the accusation.<\/p>\n
Navalnaya said Saturday that she had been \u201ccertain from the first day\u201d that her husband had been poisoned, \u201cbut now there is proof.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPutin killed Alexei with chemical weapon,\u201d she wrote on She said Putin was \u201ca murderer\u201d who \u201cmust be held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.<\/p>\n
Epibatidine is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild, and can also be manufactured in a lab, which European scientists suspect was the case with the substance used on Navalny. <\/p>\n
It works on the body in a similar way to nerve agents, causing shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, a slowed heart rate and ultimately death.<\/p>\n
European officials said they had a high degree of confidence in the assessment that Navalny died from epibatidine poisoning. <\/p>\n
Asked why the results had taken so long, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that it had been \u201ca complicated process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wadephul said \u201cno one but Putin\u2019s henchmen will be able to say in detail what happened on February 16, 2024, in the Russian penal colony. <\/p>\n
But it is clear that Russian authorities had the possibility, the motive and the means to administer the poison to Navalny.\u201d<\/p>\n
Navalny was the target of an earlier poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin, which always denied involvement. <\/p>\n
His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. <\/p>\n
Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.<\/p>\n
The UK has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. <\/p>\n
It accuses the Kremlin of carrying out a 2018 attack in the English city of Salisbury that targeted a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok. <\/p>\n
Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after she came across a discarded bottle with traces of the nerve agent.<\/p>\n
A British inquiry concluded that the attack \u201cmust have been authorized at the highest level, by President Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kremlin has denied involvement. Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006, after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210. <\/p>\n
A British inquiry concluded that two Russian agents killed Litvinenko, and Putin had \u201cprobably approved\u201d the operation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by the Kremlin with a rare and lethal toxin found in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":{"0":"post-284347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories","14":"tag-uk-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}