Navalny's wife: Tests show he was poisoned in prison

2025-09-17 22:57:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said he was killed by poisoning while serving a prison sentence in an Arctic penal colony in 2024. In a video shared on social media, Yulia Navalnaya said that analysis of smuggled biological samples, carried out by laboratories in two countries, showed that her husband had been “murdered.”

She did not provide details on the poison allegedly used, the samples or the analysis - but challenged the two laboratories to publish their results.

Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and the most vocal opposition leader in Russia, died suddenly in prison on February 16, 2024 at the age of 47.

In 2020 he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. He underwent treatment in Germany and was arrested at the airport upon his return to Russia. At the time of his death, he had been in prison for three years on trumped-up charges and had recently been transferred to a penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

Navalny's supporters and colleagues at his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) have always maintained that the Russian government was involved in his death.

Navalnaya said that after her husband's death in February 2024, his team was able to "retrieve and safely transfer" biological samples abroad and that two laboratories in different countries had concluded that he had been poisoned.

She did not reveal the location of the laboratories - but implied that they were not making their findings public due to "political considerations".

"They don't want an uncomfortable truth to come out at the wrong time," she said.

Navalnaya also suggested she would face opposition to further investigating her husband's death: "'You are the wife, of course, but there is no criminal case, there is no legal basis to give you documents.'"

"But I have reasons. Not legal, but moral," she said.

She added that Navalny had been her husband, friend and closest person and "a symbol of hope for a better future for our country."

"I know he was a symbol for you too," she said, watching images of Navalny's funeral in Moscow, which drew thousands of people despite warnings from authorities not to attend.

"I will not remain silent. I affirm that Vladimir Putin is guilty of the murder of my husband, Alexei Navalny... I call on the laboratories that conducted the studies to make the results public."

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of Navalnaya's statements./ CNA, translated by BBC