Five European governments have formally accused Russia of murdering opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison using epibatidine, a lethal neurotoxin derived from South American poison dart frogs. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands issued a joint statement on Friday at the Munich Security Conference, declaring that laboratory analyses of biological samples taken from Navalny's body conclusively confirmed the presence of the rare substance. The announcement came almost exactly two years after Navalny's death on February 16, 2024, at the age of 47, in a remote Arctic penal colony where he had been serving a combined sentence of 30.5 years.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper stated that Russia had viewed Navalny as a threat, adding that by using this form of poison, the Russian state had demonstrated the despicable tools at its disposal and its overwhelming fear of political opposition. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot described the alleged poisoning as evidence that Vladimir Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people in order to remain in power. The five nations emphasized that Russia had the means, motive, and opportunity to administer the toxin, and noted that the dart frogs producing epibatidine are not found in Russia, leaving no innocent explanation for its presence.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, appeared alongside the foreign ministers at the Munich Security Conference, delivering an emotional address in which she recalled telling the same audience two years ago that Putin had killed her husband. She declared that what had previously been words had now become science-proven fact, describing Putin as a murderer who must be held accountable. Navalnaya had confirmed in September 2025 that biological samples had been obtained from her husband's body and transferred to European laboratories for independent testing.
Epibatidine is a powerful neurotoxin that causes shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, slowed heart rate, and ultimately death, functioning similarly to military-grade nerve agents. European scientists believe the substance found in Navalny's body had been manufactured in a laboratory rather than extracted directly from the frogs. The five nations have reported Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for breaching the Chemical Weapons Convention, following a pattern of alleged Russian state poisonings that includes the 2018 Salisbury attack on former agent Sergei Skripal with Novichok and the 2006 polonium-210 killing of Alexander Litvinenko in London.
The Kremlin has rejected the accusations, maintaining that Navalny became ill after a walk and died from natural causes. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova demanded the public presentation of test results before commenting further, dismissing the statements as information leaks designed to distract from Western problems. The diplomatic fallout from the announcement is expected to intensify in the coming weeks as the case proceeds through the OPCW, with several European governments already signaling that additional sanctions against Russia may follow.
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