UK confirms Russia poisoned Navalny in prison with the rare toxin, epibatidine
The UK is today exposing the brutal and barbaric circumstances surrounding the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison.
Two years after the Munich Security Conference was shocked by the news of the leading Russian opposition figure’s death, consistent, collaborative work has confirmed through laboratory testing that the deadly toxin found in the skin of Ecuador dart frogs (epibatidine) was found in samples from Alexei Navalny’s body and highly likely resulted in his death.
Only the Russian state had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin to target Navalny during his imprisonment in a Russian penal colony in Siberia, and we hold it responsible for his death.
Epibatidine can be found naturally in dart frogs in the wild in South America. Dart frogs in captivity do not produce this toxin and it is not found naturally in Russia. There is no innocent explanation for its presence in Navalny’s body.
Russia has brazenly developed and deployed this poison in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Russia’s egregious and irresponsible actions, including its barbaric full-scale invasion of Ukraine continue to threaten our shared security. Time and again the Russian state shows the depths it is willing to go to terrorise people and undermine democracy.
The UK has pursued the truth of Alexei Navalny’s death with partners from Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Germany. We know the Russian state now used this lethal toxin to target Navalny in fear of his opposition.
Although it had been widely assumed that Navalny had been poisoned by the Russian state, the evidence of the specific poison in his body is a new development. His wife, Yulia Navalny, posted in September that there was evidence of poison in his body at the time an autopsy was conducted.
Yulia wrote in a post on X that the named poison “causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death. I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with [a] chemical weapon. I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
The Kremlin has a long history of using poison as a weapon against its enemies. The death of Alexander Litvinenko in London from radioactive polonium in 2006, the nerve agent attack on the former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, and a previous poisoning attempt on Navalny have cemented Russia’s reputation for resorting to toxins to silence critics and defectors. [Continue reading…]