Lab results show that Alexei Navalny was poisoned, says widow
Yulia Navalnaya now demanding findings be released after the labs declined to over ‘political considerations’
Alexei Navalny’s widow says that two independent labs have found that the anti-corruption campaigner was poisoned shortly before he died.
Navalny, the main political opponent of president Vladimir Putin, died in a Russian penal colony in February 2024.
The activist was serving a 19-year sentence at the time, which he had said was politically motivated.
Russian authorities said that Navalny became ill after a walk, but has otherwise remained tight-lipped about his death.
On Wednesday, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said that biological samples from her husband’s body had been taken out of Russia and tested at two laboratories.
She said that both laboratories concluded that the politicians had been poisoned. She did not elaborate on what the alleged poison was. She also said the laboratories had not released their findings due to “political considerations”.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Ms Navalnaya said in the video, which was posted on social media.
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“I demand that the laboratories that conducted the research publish their results,” she said.
“Stop appeasing Putin for some higher ‘considerations.’ You cannot placate him. While you stay silent, he does not stop.”
Ms Navalnaya has repeatedly blamed the Russian president for Navalny’s death, which Russian officials have vehemently denied. The Kremlin has not yet commented on Ms Navalnaya’s latest statement.
She said in August 2024 that she was told by Russian investigators that her husband died from a combination of “a dozen different diseases” and that he finally succumbed to arrhythmia, or an irregular heartbeat.
Ms Navalnaya disputed Russian officials’ version of events and said her husband exhibited no instances of heart disease while alive.
Navalny previously suffered from another poisoning in 2020, when the opposition leader fell sick on an internal flight in Russia. He was flown to Berlin while still in a coma for treatment two days later.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Soviet-era novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities have denied any involvement in the incident, a claim that Navalny challenged as false.