The Foreign Office has blamed the Russian state for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, which it said was the result of poisoning from a dart containing frog toxin.
The frog poison – called epibatidine – is said to have been used when Navalny, 47, died suddenly on 16 February 2024.
Yulia Navalnaya, the Russian dissident’s widow, announced the finding at a press conference at the Munich security conference. She was flanked by the foreign ministers of the UK, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. Navalnaya announced her husband’s death at the same gathering in 2024.
Navalny was being held in a jail about 40 miles (64km) north of the Arctic Circle when he died. He had been sentenced to decades in prison to be served in a “special regime”.
Navalny’s allies have accused the Kremlin repeatedly of killing him – allegations Moscow has dismissed as absurd. Russian officials insist he died of a mixture of diseases, including heart arrhythmia triggered by hypertension.
Traces of epibatidine were found after analysis of material samples found on Navalny’s body. The UK government said that the poison is found naturally in dart frogs in the wild in South America, but that when the frogs are in captivity they do not produce the substance, which is also not found naturally in Russia.
A statement concluded: “There is no innocent explanation for its presence in Navalny’s body.”
The UK has reported the poisoning to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), alleging a “flagrant violation” of the Chemical Weapons Convention by Russia.
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 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.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Since Yulia Navalnaya announced the loss of her husband here in Munich two years ago, the UK has pursued the truth of Alexei Navalny’s death with fierce determination.
“Only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia. Today, beside his widow, the UK is shining a light on the Kremlin’s barbaric plot to silence his voice.”
More details soon…
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
