Navalny's widow says two labs found he was poisoned

The widow of Alexei Navalny said on Wednesday that two independent laboratories abroad have concluded that Navalny was poisoned shortly before his death in a Russian Arctic penal colony. Navalny, a prominent opposition figure who led major anti-corruption campaigns and became Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe, died in February 2024 at age 47 while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed was politically motivated. Russian authorities have given few specifics about the circumstances surrounding his death, noting only that he fell ill after a walk.

In a video released on Wednesday, Yulia Navalnaya said that biological samples from Navalny were taken out of Russia and tested by two laboratories in different countries, and both reached the same conclusion that he had been poisoned. She said the findings were not released due to political considerations. She did not provide proof of the poison or identify its type. Navalnaya criticized the absence of video footage from the penal colony on the day of Navalny's death and showed images she described as his cell with vomit on the floor. She urged the laboratories to publish their results and urged critics to stop appeasing Moscow.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said he was not aware of Navalnaya's statement and could not comment, signaling a cautious official response. The statement comes amid ongoing questions about the circumstances of Navalny’s death and the Russian government’s handling of the case.

Navalny's family has previously contested official explanations. In August 2024, Russian investigators told Navalnaya that Navalny died from a combination of about a dozen diseases and ultimately from an arrhythmia, a claim she rejected, arguing that Navalny did not show heart problems while alive. Navalny himself had survived a poisoning in 2020 when he fell ill on an internal flight and was flown to Berlin for treatment; German, French and Swedish labs, along with investigations by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, determined that he had been exposed to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. Russian authorities have denied involvement in that incident.

The latest claim adds to a long-running dispute over Navalny’s death, which has drawn international scrutiny and heightened tensions between Moscow and Western governments. Navalny’s supporters have long insisted that Russian authorities retaliated against the opposition leader for his anti-corruption crusade, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement and defended the official investigations. The broader context includes Navalny’s 2020 poisoning and the ongoing argument over accountability for his death in a remote Arctic facility, as his supporters press for independent verification of any laboratory findings.