The Kremlin yesterday firmly rejected accusations by five European countries that the Russian state killed Alexei Navalny two years ago using a toxin from poisonous frogs, while his widow said that the truth had finally been proven.
Navalny, the most prominent domestic critic of President Vladimir Putin, died on February 16, 2024, in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony, north of the Arctic Circle, about 1.900 kilometers northeast of Moscow. He was 47 years old.
His death, which Russian authorities said was due to natural causes, occurred a month before Putin was re-elected to a fifth term in elections that Western countries deemed neither free nor fair due to censorship and crackdowns on opponents.
Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said on Saturday that analyses of samples taken from Navalny's body had "unequivocally" confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America and which does not occur naturally in Russia.
"Navalny died while in prison, which means that Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to give him this poison," they stated.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegations.
"Of course, we do not accept such accusations. We do not agree with them. We consider them biased and unfounded. And we resolutely reject them," Peskov told reporters.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, previously stated that Moscow would provide an appropriate comment if and when the countries making the accusations publish and present in detail the results of their analyses.
Until then, the state-run TASS agency reported, these accusations were "mere propaganda aimed at diverting attention from the West's pressing problems."
The British government on Saturday refused to respond to a Reuters query about how samples from Navalny's body were obtained and where they were analyzed.
The joint European statement recalls the Novichok nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, in 2018, when former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned, noting that Moscow has a history of using deadly poisons against its enemies.
Russia denies involvement in the Salisbury incident. It also rejects British allegations that Moscow killed dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 by planting radioactive polonium-210 in his tea.
A group of 15 countries, mostly European, but including Australia, New Zealand and Canada, issued a new statement yesterday, reiterating their demand that Russia conduct a transparent investigation into Navalny's death.
The statement, published on the website of the German Foreign Ministry, states that Russian human rights activists are continuing Navalny's legacy and calls on Moscow to release "all political prisoners."
The allegations of the use of toxins from poisonous frogs were made at the Munich Security Conference, on the eve of the second anniversary of Navalny's death.
Yulia Navalny, his widow, who has maintained from the beginning that her husband was murdered by the Russian state, said yesterday that the findings provide the necessary evidence to support her position.
“Two years. We have reached the truth, and one day we will reach justice,” Navalny wrote on X, above a photo of her late husband smiling.
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