Navalny poisoned? The Kremlin denies but the mother calls for justice: “Now we know the truth”

Meanwhile the activist’s mother calls for justice. “This confirms what we knew all along. We knew that our son had not simply died in prison, but had been murdered”, said Lyudmila Navalnaya near her son’s grave in Moscow, underlining her faith in justice and the hope of identifying those responsible.

“I think it will take some time, but we will find out who did it. Of course, we want this to happen in our country and we want justice to prevail,” she added.

“Killed with frog venom

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands — have publicly said that Navalny did not die of natural causes but was poisoned using a rare neurotoxic toxin, epibatidine, a lethal toxic neurotoxin found in arrow frogs living in Ecuador. According to laboratory analyses, the poison is not naturally present in Russia and its presence in Navalny’s body indicates deliberate intoxication, for which European states hold the Russian state responsible, with “means, motives and opportunities” to administer it while he was detained.

These conclusions — stated on the sidelines of the Munich security conference and also confirmed by some Western allies in official statements — mark a decisive step in the reconstruction of the death of the activist, who died in February 2024 during a very harsh prison regime. The Kremlin has rejected the accusations, branding them as propaganda, but the conclusion of the scientific analyzes fuels new international pressure on Moscow to seek justice for what happened.

Cooper: “Barbaric Kremlin plot exposed”

In an interview with the BBC, British Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper declared that “the Kremlin’s barbaric plot has been exposed”. ”We together found evidence of this lethal toxin that was found in Alexei Navalny’s body at the time of his death. And only the Russian regime had the motive, means and opportunity to administer this lethal poison to him while he was in prison in Russia,” Cooper said. The Moscow authorities ”wanted to silence him because he was a critic of their regime and that’s why we exposed this barbaric Kremlin plot and made sure we did it with evidence as well,” Cooper said.

The British minister said she wanted to continue the investigation into the death of the Russian activist starting from ”one of Alexei Navalny’s own statements. He said: ‘Telling the truth, spreading the truth, this is the most dangerous weapon of all.’ The Russian regime tried to prevent it, so we did it.”