Russia dismisses Western claim Navalny was killed with frog toxin
Protest outside the Russian Embassy in Warsaw after Russian authorities announced the death of Alexei Navalny, on Feb. 16, 2024 (Photo: Dawid Zuchowicz/Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS)
Russia has formally responded to a claim that Russian
opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed with poison derived from an
Ecuadorian poison dart frog — epibatidine — according to analyses of his
biological samples conducted by independent laboratories in the
United Kingdom, Sweden,
France, Germany and the Netherlands.
A joint statement by the five countries was published on the
official government websites of the United Kingdom and Sweden.
Maria Zakharova, the official spokeswoman for Russia’s
Foreign Ministry, told the Russian outlet RBC that the statement was “an
information dump intended to distract from the West’s pressing problems.”
“At the moment when they should have presented the results
of the investigation into the Nord Stream pipelines, they recall Navalny. When
they were officially asked to provide Navalny’s test data, they threw out
sensations about the Skripals … There will be test results, there will be
substance formulas — then there will be comment. Without this, all talk and
statements are an information dump aimed at diverting attention from the West’s
pressing problems,” Zakharova said.
Russia’s Embassy in the United Kingdom issued a separate
statement saying it has “no faith whatsoever” in the conclusions of experts
from the five countries and calling the official statement a “laughable circus
performance” on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.
“We are already accustomed to the absurdity of Western
fabrications — what kind of person would need to be to believe this delirium
about a frog? However, what truly causes bewilderment is the method chosen by
Western politicians — necropropaganda. This is not a search for justice but
mockery of the dead. Even after the death of a Russian citizen, London and
European capitals cannot let him rest, which speaks volumes about the
initiators of this campaign,” the embassy statement said.
The alkaloid epibatidine was discovered in 1974, but its
full structure was determined only in 1992. Epibatidine is a neurotoxin that causes
loss of consciousness, paralysis, seizures, coma and ultimately death.
Laboratory studies have shown that epibatidine does not
break down in the human body, and its maximum concentration in the brain occurs
about 30 minutes after entering the body.
The death of Alexei Navalny
In 2020, Navalny survived poisoning with a substance from
the Novichok group. Laboratories in several Western countries confirmed that
finding after he was transferred to Germany for treatment in August 2020.
In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia, and in February
he was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in the Yves Rocher case — because,
according to the Kremlin regime, he persuaded the French company Yves Rocher to
enter into a disadvantageous contract.
In March 2022, he received a nine-year sentence in a penal
colony on charges of fraud and contempt of court, and in August 2023 he was
sentenced to 19 years in a special-regime colony in a case involving the
“organization of an extremist community.”
At the beginning of December 2023, Navalny stopped
communicating. On Dec. 25, it became known that he had been transferred to a
penal colony in Russia’s Far North — in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
On Feb. 16, 2024, Russian authorities announced Navalny’s death
at the colony in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
Navalny’s team said the medical report on his death, which
was shown to his mother, listed the cause of death as “natural.”
Alexei Navalny was buried on March 1, 2024, at the
Borisovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.
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