Five EU countries accuse Russia of poisoning Navalny with Ecuadorian tree frog toxin
15 February 00:21
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned in prison, according to a joint statement by the UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, published on February 14 by the UK Foreign Office, reports "Komersant Ukrainian".
Based on an analysis of samples taken from the politician, the governments of these countries concluded that he was poisoned with the highly toxic substance epibatidine, which is obtained from poisonous tree frogs that live in Ecuador and are not found in the wild in Russia.
“Given the toxicity of epibatidine and the reported symptoms, poisoning is the most likely cause of death. Navalny died while in custody, which means that Russia had the means, motive, and opportunity to use this poison on him,” the statement said. It also said that the findings “underscore the need to hold Russia accountable” for repeated violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention and, in this case, the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
The authors of the statement recalled that Moscow was also involved in the use of the nerve agent Novichok in the previous poisoning of Alexei Navalny in August 2020 and the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.
The website of the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, which is considered to be the developer of Novichok, contains articles mentioning epibatidine. Several articles contain information on methods for detecting epibatidine in plasma, as well as on a one-step synthesis method for structural analogues of this substance.
The permanent representatives of the countries that submitted the statement to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons sent a letter to the head of the OPCW and informed him of Moscow’s violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
“We are also concerned that Russia has not destroyed all of its chemical weapons. We and our partners will use all the political levers at our disposal to continue to hold Russia accountable,” the statement said.
Navalny’s wife Yulia wrote on her X account that European scientists had been studying samples that her team had managed to bring out of Russia for two years. “I was sure that my husband had been poisoned from day one, but now there is proof: [Vladimir] Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapons. I am grateful to the European countries for their painstaking work,” she said, adding that the poison from the skin of the Ecuadorian tree frog causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death. “This poison could not have accidentally ended up in the solitary confinement cell in a colony in a village above the Arctic Circle. It got there on Vladimir Putin’s orders,” wrote FBK chair Maria Spivkikh.
Navalny died in February 2024 in Colony No. 3, “Polar Wolf,” in the village of Kharp. The politician spent almost 300 days in solitary confinement, where he was placed repeatedly. The Federal Penitentiary Service stated that Navalny fell ill during a walk and died of sudden arrhythmia caused by a “combined disease.”
