Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned by deadly ‘dart frog’ toxin, Europeans say

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in prison after being poisoned with a deadly toxin found in Ecuadorian dart frogs, the U.K. and other allies claimed Saturday.

Russia’s prison service reported in February 2024 that Navalny died after having felt unwell following a walk around the high-security facility in a remote town above the Arctic Circle where he was serving a combined 30½-year jail sentence.

He was 47.

Yulia Navalnaya, the Russian dissident’s widow, appeared at a press conference on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to announce the results of a Western analysis into his death, flanked by the foreign ministers of European nations.

“The U.K., Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands are confident that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin,” the British foreign ministry said in a joint statement Saturday, citing “analyses of samples from Alexei Navalny.”

“Epibatidine is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America,” the statement added. “It is not naturally found in Russia.”

It is not clear how the toxin, which is 200 times stronger than morphine, was allegedly administered to Navalny.

“Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison,” said British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. “We are here today to shine a spotlight on the Kremlin’s barbaric attempt to silence Alexei Navalny’s voice.”

Britain has informed the Organisation on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention, a press release said. 

Since Navalny died, Nalvanaya has taken up the mantle of his struggle against official corruption and President Vladimir Putin’s government.

In September, Navalnyaya said she had managed to have lab tests conducted in a bid to confirm the suspicion that he died at the hands of the Kremlin.

“We managed to transfer Alexei’s biological materials abroad,” Navalnaya wrote, without giving any further details about the tests or which countries were involved.

News of Navalny’s death drew outrage from the West, where many leaders blamed Putin. Former President Joe Biden said he was “both not surprised and outraged.”

The Kremlin dismissed what it said were “absolutely rabid statements.”

Navalny’s team said afterward that his mother and lawyers were denied access to his body and were told the probe into what killed him had been extended.

Navalnaya accused the Kremlin of hiding his body to cover up having killed him. He had previously been poisoned with a military nerve agent while on a business trip in Russia in 2020 — an attempt on his life that he blamed directly on Putin.

Navalny’s body was finally returned a week after his death, and thousands turned out to mourn him at a funeral in Moscow.

Hundreds of people were detained in the days after Navalny’s death for simply laying flowers in his honor at memorials around Russia.