London : The foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands have jointly accused Russia of being directly responsible for the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In a statement released on Saturday, the countries said that tests on Navalny’s samples confirmed the presence of the lethal substance epibatidine, a toxin typically found in poisonous dart frogs in South America.
The statement added that only the Russian government had the means and motive to carry out such an attack. The five nations also said they are reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for violating international chemical weapons restrictions.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said, “Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this type of poison, Russia demonstrated both the weapons it could deploy and the extent to which it fears political opposition.”
Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption campaigner and one of President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics, was found dead in February 2024 at an Arctic penal colony. He had been serving a 19-year prison sentence, which he and his supporters called politically motivated.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, had said last year that two independent laboratories confirmed he had been poisoned shortly before his death. She has repeatedly held Putin responsible.
Russian authorities, however, have strongly denied these allegations, claiming that Navalny became ill after a walk and died of natural causes. It is notable that Navalny was previously poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent, an attack he blamed on the Kremlin. After treatment and recovery in Germany, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and spent his final three years in prison.