The Kremlin has dismissed as “baseless” a joint assessment by five European countries that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with the potent toxin epibatidine, a claim that resurfaced as supporters marked two years since his death in an Arctic prison colony.
Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands said in a joint statement Saturday they believe Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic opponent, was killed with epibatidine, a rare alkaloid found in poison dart frogs. The governments said their assessment was derived from samples taken from Navalny’s body.
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Navalny died in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence in a remote Arctic penal colony. The anti-corruption crusader had returned to Russia months earlier, despite prior poisoning allegations and arrests, to continue challenging the Kremlin’s rule.
Russian authorities rejected the latest European conclusion without providing supporting detail, calling it unfounded. Moscow has consistently denied responsibility in Navalny’s death.
Outside the Moscow cemetery where he is buried, Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, said the European assessment confirmed what the family has long believed. “This confirms what we knew from the very beginning. We knew that our son did not simply die in prison, he was murdered,” she told reporters. “I think it will take some time, but we will find out who did it. Of course, we want this to happen in our country, and we want justice to prevail.”
Dozens of people visited Navalny’s grave early Monday, among them foreign diplomats. Some mourners wore masks or scarves that concealed their faces, underscoring the risks of public displays of support for the late opposition leader.
Before his death, Russian authorities had designated Navalny and his organization “extremist,” a label that exposes supporters and even those who reference his exiled Anti-Corruption Foundation to potential prosecution. In recent years, courts and law enforcement have escalated crackdowns on dissent, narrowing the space for civic activism and opposition politics.
The competing narratives over Navalny’s death—European governments citing toxicological analysis and the Kremlin scorning those findings—highlight the deep gulf between Russia and much of Europe on accountability and the rule of law. The latest assessment adds a new layer to a case that has galvanized Russia’s fractured opposition and focused international attention on the country’s prison system and human rights record.
At the graveside, the steady stream of visitors served as a reminder of Navalny’s enduring influence inside Russia, even as many of his closest allies remain in exile. For his family, the two-year mark sharpened a demand that has echoed since the day he died: a clear accounting of what happened, and by whom.
With the Kremlin rejecting the European findings and relatives vowing to keep pressing for answers, the question of responsibility for Navalny’s death remains unresolved—reverberating in courtrooms, chancelleries and cemetery paths two winters on.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
