17.9.2025
The widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has accused the government of Vladmir Putin of poisoning her husband.
Two tests carried out independently of each other in foreign labs have reportedly shown that the late Russian politician and activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned in prison, his widow Yulia Navalnaya said on Wednesday.
Navalny died suddenly in a Russian jail in the Arctic Circle on February 16, 2024, at the age of 47.
His widow has repeatedly accused the Russian state of organising and executing his murder, allegations the Kremlin has dismissed as unfounded.
In a video posted on the social media site X, Navalnaya said biological material from her husband had been smuggled to two unnamed countries abroad in 2024, where laboratories examined the material.
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” she claimed in the video.
She demanded the laboratories concerned publicly release the results about what she referred to as the “inconvenient truth” but not specify what type of poison the laboratories had detected.
“These results are of public importance and must be published. We all deserve to know the truth,” Navalnaya said.
When asked about the claims in Navalnaya’s video, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “I don’t know anything about these statements of hers and I can’t say anything.”
She also read from the last letter she had received from Navalny, in which he claimed there had been little response from authorities when he first said he felt unwell.
Navalnaya has always insisted that her husband, the most prominent opposition figure and anti-corruption campaigner in Russia, was murdered by the state, allegations the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed as nonsense.
Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said that before Navalny died, plans had been put in place to swap him in a prisoner exchange with the West.
Alexi Navalny...