Yulia Navalnaya says foreign tests show her husband was poisoned

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said on Tuesday that two laboratories in different countries have independently confirmed that her husband was poisoned before his death in a Russian prison last year.

In a video message posted on social media, Navalnaya revealed that biological materials belonging to her husband had been transferred abroad in 2024, shortly after his sudden death at the age of 47 in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle. “These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” she said.

Navalny, long considered President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, died on 16 February 2024. His death deprived Russia’s opposition of its most visible leader and prompted accusations from Navalnaya and other allies that he had been deliberately eliminated. The Kremlin has consistently rejected such claims, describing them as groundless.

“We all deserve to know the truth”

Navalnaya said she had decided to make public the fact that international laboratories had tested the samples and that both confirmed poisoning. She did not specify the substance identified but urged the institutions involved to release their findings.

“These results are of public importance and must be published. We all deserve to know the truth,” she declared.

When asked about her remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied: “I don’t know anything about these statements of hers, and I can’t say anything.”

The Kremlin continues to portray Navalny’s allies as extremists acting on behalf of Western governments to destabilise Russia. Putin himself said earlier this year that, before Navalny’s death, discussions had been underway about a potential prisoner swap with the West.

Death in detention

Navalny had returned to Russia voluntarily in 2021 after recovering in Germany from what Western laboratory tests determined was an attempted poisoning with a nerve agent in Siberia. He was arrested upon arrival and sentenced in a series of trials on fraud, extremism and other charges that he always denounced as politically motivated.

Last year, Russian investigators claimed that Navalny died of “a combination of diseases”. Navalnaya rejected this explanation, saying her husband’s final moments pointed clearly to poisoning. In her latest video, she described how he collapsed in an exercise cell, complained of intense pain in his chest and stomach, and began vomiting. She showed an image of what she said was the punishment cell where he had been placed, with traces of vomit visible on the floor.

Navalny’s death drew condemnation from Western governments at the time. The European Union called his passing “a tragic reminder of the repression in Russia” and demanded an independent investigation. Statements from Brussels stressed that Moscow carried full responsibility for the safety of political prisoners.

The United States also reacted strongly. Washington described Navalny’s death as “a terrible tragedy that once again highlights the brutality of the Russian system”. U.S. officials emphasised that, while intelligence assessments suggested Putin had not personally given an order, responsibility lay squarely with the Russian authorities who had imprisoned him.

Navalnaya said that the truth about her husband’s death was inconvenient for some unidentified politicians in the West, but gave no specifics.

For years, Navalny had been regarded in both Washington and European capitals as a symbol of democratic resistance inside Russia. His death eliminated the most charismatic challenger to Putin’s rule.

Navalny’s death cut short the career of a politician who had described Putin’s Russia as a fragile criminal state run by thieves, sycophants and spies. In one of his last published essays in 2023, he castigated Russia’s ruling elite for its corruption and failure to reform after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Admired worldwide for his defiance, Navalny returned to Russia despite the clear risk of imprisonment, convinced that political change could only be achieved from within. His widow now insists that the circumstances of his death must not be covered up.

“Alexei was killed, and the world deserves to know how and why,” she said.

Sources: Reuters, AP

Caption: Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian activist Alexei Navalny, attends a hearing of representatives of the Russian democratic opposition on the EU support to Russian pro-democratic forces at Foreign affairs committee of EU Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, 5 June 2025. EPA/OLIVIER HOSLET