Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said two foreign laboratories confirmed that her husband was poisoned. She revealed that biological samples were secretly smuggled out of Russia in 2024 and tested abroad.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said in a video message posted on X. She called on the labs to make their findings public, adding, “These results are of public importance and must be published. We all deserve to know the truth.”
Sudden Death in Arctic Prison
Navalny, 47, died on February 16, 2024, while in a prison about 64 km north of the Arctic Circle. He was serving decades in a “special regime” facility. Russian officials said he died from heart problems linked to hypertension. The Kremlin has dismissed all poisoning claims as “absurd.”
At the time of his death, the prison authority said Navalny “felt unwell after a walk and almost immediately lost consciousness.” However, opposition leaders and independent reports have disputed this explanation.
Disappearance of Prison Footage
Navalnaya also claimed that surveillance footage from her husband’s final day had mysteriously vanished. Navalny had been under constant video monitoring during his imprisonment, raising further questions about the circumstances of his death.
His allies released unseen photos from his cell. The pictures showed a cramped room with what looked like vomit and blood on the floor next to a notebook and an Oxford dictionary.
Allies Point to Poisoning
Leonid Volkov, a close aide to Navalny, wrote on X that the opposition leader had been “murdered agonizingly, with poison.” He said, “No matter how much they tried to erase details from the medical records or cover their tracks, we know everything about his final day and the method of his killing.”
The investigative outlet The Insider also published what it said were original medical records from the day Navalny died. These reports described “severe abdominal pain, vomiting, convulsions, and loss of consciousness.” A later version of the report removed these symptoms, fueling suspicions of a cover-up.
Russia’s History of Poison Attacks
The Kremlin has long faced allegations of using poison against critics. Cases include the 2006 polonium killing of Alexander Litvinenko in London and the 2018 nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal in the UK.
Navalny himself survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 involving Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent. He was treated in Germany, recovered, and returned to Russia in 2021. Soon after, he was arrested and sentenced to long prison terms.
