The widow of Alexei Navalny, who died in February 2024 while imprisoned at an Arctic penal colony in Russia, said Wednesday that her husband was poisoned after two labs tested biological samples from his body.
Until his death last year, Navalny was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critics. The opposition leader was barred from running against the incumbent in 2018 due to an embezzlement conviction, one action that the Kremlin has taken against the dissenter. He was eventually imprisoned for a lengthy sentence.
Russian authorities said Navalny became ill after a scheduled walk at the remote prison, telling his widow that he died from arrhythmia. Yulia Navalnaya disputed Russia’s official statement, saying her husband never exhibited signs of heart disease before his death.
In a video posted Wednesday, Navalnaya said independent labs in at least two different countries determined Navalny was poisoned after examining his biological samples.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” she said without elaborating on the specific poison or naming the countries in which the lab tests were conducted.
Navalnaya explained that while she may not have legal grounds to share the test results with the public, she does have moral grounds.
“I demand that the labs that conducted the analyses publish their results,” she added. “Stop pandering to Putin on account of so-called higher considerations. While you remain silent, he does not stop. Perhaps even now, someone else is dying from another of Putin’s poisonings.”
She noted that such cases have been seen not just in Russia but around the world.
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In 2020, Navalny suffered from poisoning by a Soviet-developed Novichok nerve agent. As a result, he was severely hospitalized in Berlin for a month. He claimed that Putin was responsible.
The Kremlin declined to respond to Navalnaya’s new claims, with a spokesperson saying he was not aware of her statement and therefore could not comment when asked.