Navalny Was Poisoned, Widow Claims With Lab Evidence

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has publicly claimed that her husband was poisoned while serving his prison sentence, citing laboratory analyses carried out in two separate Western countries. Speaking in a recorded statement, Navalnaya said biological samples taken from Navalny in February 2024 had been smuggled abroad and subjected to independent tests. Both laboratories, she emphasized, reached the same conclusion: Navalny had been poisoned once again while behind bars.

She insisted that the findings were of public significance and should not remain hidden. “We all deserve to know the truth,” Navalnaya declared, stressing that her position was not dictated by political calculation. She directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of bearing responsibility for her husband’s death and charged Russian intelligence services with developing and employing banned chemical and biological agents. Calling on the laboratories to release their results, Navalnaya warned Western governments against appeasing the Kremlin. “You won’t be able to stop him by staying silent,” she said.

Her statement comes against the backdrop of Navalny’s long and dangerous struggle with the Russian authorities. He first fell victim to poisoning in August 2020, collapsing on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after being exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. The aircraft made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was treated before being transferred in a comatose state to Berlin. That incident prompted the US, UK and EU to impose sanctions on Russian state research institutes tied to chemical weapons development.

Navalny chose to return to Russia in January 2021, despite the risks, and was immediately arrested and sentenced to lengthy imprisonment. He died on 16 February 2024 in the high-security “Polar Wolf” penal colony in Kharp, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, under circumstances that remain opaque.

In her new appeal, Navalnaya presented testimony from five staff members of the prison, saying it helped piece together the events surrounding his death. According to senior inspector Anton Nemtsov, Navalny felt unwell during an outdoor walk, was escorted back to his cell, and later carried unconscious to the medical ward. Resuscitation efforts, Nemtsov said, did not begin until more than forty minutes after his collapse. Another staff member, deputy medical chief Ruslan Tsoi, testified that the ambulance recorded a diagnosis of “convulsive syndrome, sudden death syndrome.” Navalnaya argued that the convulsions were consistent with poisoning.

She also showed a photograph of Navalny’s cell, highlighting what appeared to be traces of vomit. Despite the extensive surveillance system in the facility, no footage of his final hours has been released. Navalnaya suggested this silence was deliberate: “If the recordings matched the official version, they would have been broadcast repeatedly on every state channel,” she remarked.

Navalny’s activism had made him Russia’s most prominent opposition figure. Through his Anti-Corruption Foundation, he uncovered high-level graft, while repeatedly facing arrests, imprisonment and physical attacks. His 2020 Novichok poisoning already brought international condemnation, but his death inside prison in 2024 amplified global outrage.

Even Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged after Navalny’s death that he had agreed to exchange him for Russians held abroad, largely intelligence operatives. “But unfortunately, what happened, happened,” Putin said at the time.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin has intensified its repression of dissent, further silencing critics and political opponents. Navalny’s widow has now placed his death squarely in the context of that crackdown, demanding accountability from Moscow and transparency from the international community.