Navalny | Pakistan

Five European countries — including Britain, France and Germany — accused Russia of “poisoning” opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison in 2024 using a “rare toxin”, on Saturday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “The UK, Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands are confident that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin,” the countries said in a joint statement, following “analyses of samples” from his body. The staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin died in an Arctic prison in February 2024, while serving a 19-year prison sentence. The epibatidine toxin found in the skin of dart frogs native to South America was found in samples and “highly likely resulted in his death”, the European states said. “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,” the UK foreign office added in a statement. Navalny’s widow, ...

UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands confirm epibatidine in Navalny samples

The wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Wednesday that laboratory analysis of smuggled biological samples found he was killed by poisoning while incarcerated at an Arctic prison in February 2024. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most formidable critic for years, died in mysterious circumstances while serving a 19-year prison sentence on a string of charges widely seen as retribution for his opposition. The charismatic anti-corruption campaigner had rallied hundreds of thousands across Russia in anti-Kremlin protests as he exposed the alleged ill-got gains of Putin’s inner circle. His allies allege he was murdered in prison, and Moscow has never fully explained the causes of his death, saying only that he fell ill while walking in the prison yard on February 16, 2024. Before he was buried, his wife Yulia Navalnaya said his allies “were able to obtain and securely transfer biological samples of Alexei abroad”. “Laboratories in two countries came to the conclusion that Alexei was killed. Spe...