Tests Have Found The Late Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Was Poisoned In Jail, His Widow Said
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,”
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has said she received results from foreign laboratories finding her husband had died after being poisoned in prison.
47-year-old Navalny — who was Russian president Vladimir Putin’s biggest critic — was serving a 19-year sentence in a remote Arctic penal colony when Russian state media announced on Feb. 16, 2024, he had died.
Russian officials had said Navalny collapsed and lost consciousness after a morning walk and died from a combination of diseases, including heart arrhythmia.
At the time, Navalnaya and Navalny’s team had accused Putin of killing her husband, as his mother had seen him alive and in good health just four days earlier.
Navalny had already survived at least two poisoning attempts, including one in 2020 when he nearly died from being poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent in a suspected Kremlin attack.
On Sept. 17, Navalnaya published a video on social media revealing that she had smuggled Navalny’s biological samples out of Russia to be tested by two independent foreign laboratories.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” she said.
In the video, she also questioned the lack of video footage from the prison in his final hours and shared images she said were of Navalny’s cell on the day of his death with vomit on the floor.
Navalnaya did not identify the labs or the exact toxin but called on the labs to release their findings publicly.
Russian authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement in Navalny’s death.
Kassy Cho
Kassy Cho
Kassy Cho
