Alexei Navalny (C), pictured speaking during an unauthorized rally against the re-election of President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2018, was poisoned by the Russian government with a lethal toxin found in South American frogs, five European nations on Saturday said that laboratory test findings show. File Photo by Dmitry Serebryakov/EPA-EFE
Feb. 14 (UPI) — Russia is responsible for the 2024 poisoning death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny while he was imprisoned after blaming a previous attempt on his life on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny died after being poisoned with epibatidine, a deadly toxin found in the skin of wild dart frogs in South America, a death which five European governments said on Saturday could only have been caused by Russia because he was imprisoned in a penal colony in Siberia.
The United Kingdom, alongside Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Germany, has reported the poisoning to the Organization for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons as a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the five nations said in a joint press release.
The finding was made after laboratory testing of smuggled samples from Navalny’s body and his cell, confirming findings from two other laboratories on the samples revealed in September 2025.
“Only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia,” U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said in the release.
“Russia saw Navalny as a threat,” Cooper said. “By 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.”
The announcement comes exactly two years after Navalny’s death at a Russian penal colony near Salekhard, a city located more than 1,900 miles northeast of Moscow and beyond the Arctic Circle.
Russia’s Federal Prison Service at the time said that 47-year-old Navalny had reported not feeling well after a walk, d