LONDON — Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said two foreign laboratories had carried out tests on biological samples obtained from her husband that showed he was poisoned.
Navalny died suddenly at the age of 47 on February 16, 2024, in a Russian prison in the Arctic Circle, depriving the Russian opposition of its most popular leader.
Navalnaya has repeatedly accused Russia of killing him, an allegation the Kremlin dismisses as nonsense. President Vladimir Putin has said that before Navalny died there had been plans to swap Navalny in a prisoner exchange with the West.
Navalnaya posted a video on X in which she said that biological material from Navalny was smuggled abroad in 2024 and that two laboratories examined the material.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said.
She demanded that the laboratories release their findings about what she called the “inconvenient truth”. She did not specify what poison the laboratories had found.
“These results are of public importance and must be published. We all deserve to know the truth,” Navalnaya said.
When asked about Navalnaya’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I don’t know anything about these statements of hers, and I can’t say anything.”
The Kremlin casts Navalny’s political allies as dangerous extremists out to destabilise Russia on behalf of the West. It says Putin enjoys overwhelming support among ordinary Russians.
Navalny described Putin’s Russia as a brittle criminal state run by thieves, sycophants and spies who care only about money. He had long forecast Russia could face seismic political turmoil, including revolution.
In one of his last essays, Navalny in 2023 admonished the Russian elite for its venality, expressing hatred for those who squandered a historic opportunity to reform the country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.