The wife of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny on Wednesday (September 17) said that lab tests conducted on biological samples secretly taken from him reveal he was poisoned while imprisoned in a remote Arctic facility in February 2024.
Navalny, a leading critic of President Vladimir Putin, died under suspicious circumstances during a 19-year prison term, which many view as political retaliation.
Known for exposing corruption in Putin’s circle and mobilising mass protests, Navalny’s demise has remained unexplained by Russian authorities, who claim he suddenly fell ill during a prison yard walk on February 16.
Before the burial, Yulia Navalnaya revealed that Navalny’s supporters managed to discreetly send biological samples abroad for testing.
“The labs in two countries concluded that Alexei was deliberately poisoned,” she said in a social media video.
Though she did not disclose the specifics of the samples or the poison identified, she called on the laboratories to publicly confirm their findings and name the toxin.
Navalnaya also shared unverified images purportedly showing Navalny’s prison cell after his body was taken away, highlighting a visible pool of vomit and citing prison staff accounts describing seizures.
Navalny had previously survived a Novichok nerve agent poisoning in 2020 during a Siberian campaign tour, after which he was flown to Germany for recovery.
Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny Photograph: (AFP)
He was imprisoned upon his return to Russia in 2021 on charges widely regarded as politically motivated.
While incarcerated, Navalny continued his anti-Putin activism and condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine. Officials say he died suddenly after falling ill during an outdoor walk.
Delays in releasing his body to his family raised further doubts among supporters. Navalnaya maintains Putin ordered her husband’s assassination, an allegation the Kremlin denies.
Since Navalny’s death, the government intensified repression of his associates, branding his wife a “terrorist and extremist,” and imprisoning his lawyers and journalists covering his cases.
Many of Navalny’s relatives and key supporters have fled Russia. The opposition, weakened by internal divisions, struggles to maintain influence in exile.
The Kremlin claimed Donald Trump was showing signs of “emotional overload” after he called Vladimir Putin “absolutely crazy” following Moscow’s largest aerial assault on Ukraine.
The US president said on Truth Social on Sunday that “something has happened” to Putin, after Russia killed 13 in Ukraine with 367 drones and missiles. “He has gone absolutely crazy,” Trump said. “Needlessly killing a lot of people.”
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said the comments were “connected to an emotional overload of everyone involved”.
Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, meanwhile said that Ukraine’s allies had removed all range limits on supplied arms, amid reports he would give Kyiv Taurus missiles.
Trump’s comments followed Russia’s largest combined aerial attack since its full-scale invasion of February 2022. At least 13 people were killed and dozens injured in Ukraine during the night between Saturday and Sunday after Russia fired 367 drones and missiles.
Between Sunday evening and Monday morning, Russia launched 355 drones against Ukraine, killing 10. The Ukrainian air force said it was the largest attack yet conducted with drones alone.
Peskov said the latest aerial assaults were a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s “social infrastructure”.
The Russian defence ministry said that air defence systems destroyed 20 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said on Sunday there was no “military sense” to Russia’s aerial attacks – rather they were “an obvious political choice… by Putin, a choice by Russia… to continue the war and destroy lives.”
In an apparent response to the Russian attacks over the weekend, German chancellor Merz said there were “no longer” range restrictions on arms supplied to Ukraine.
“This means that Ukraine can now defend itself, for example, by attacking military positions in Russia… with very few exceptions, it didn’t do that until recently. It can now do that,” Merz said.
Reuters reported that Zelensky was due to travel to Berlin on Wednesday, although this has not been confirmed.
The BBC approached the Chancellery for comment on whether Merz’s statement suggested an announcement was imminent on the supply of Taurus missiles – something that the previous German government refused to do.
Last year, the UK said that Ukraine had the right to decide how to use British supplied weapons in its defence. In November, then-US president Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles supplied by the US to strike Russia, albeit with limitations.
The Taurus missile has a range of about 500km – a far greater distance than other systems supplied by Ukraine’s allies. Russia said supply of the weapon would be “a dangerous move”.
Emergency workers at a site where private houses were destroyed in a Russian strike in the Kyiv region on Sunday
Speaking in New Jersey late on Sunday, Trump said of Putin: “I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
He also said he was considering increasing US sanctions on Russia – something he has repeatedly threatened to do before.
Trump posted his “crazy” remark shortly afterwards, adding on Truth Social: “I’ve always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
But the US president also had strong words for Zelensky, saying that he was “doing his country no favours by talking the way he does”.
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump wrote of Zelensky.
Despite Kyiv’s European allies preparing further sanctions for Russia, the US has said it will either continue trying to broker these peace talks, or “walk away” if progress does not follow.
Peskov said on Monday that Russia was “truly grateful” to the Americans and “personally to President Trump” for their help in organising and launching this negotiation process.
Last week, Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire deal to halt the fighting.
The US president said he believed the call had gone “very well”, adding that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations toward a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.
Ukraine has publicly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire but Putin has only said Russia will work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace” – a move described by Kyiv and its European allies as delaying tactics.
The first direct Ukrainian-Russian talks since 2022 were held on 16 May in Istanbul, Turkey.
Aside from a major prisoner of war swap last week, there was little or no progress on bringing a pause in fighting closer.
Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory. This includes Crimea – Ukraine’s southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were jailed Friday in Russia as part of the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels unseen since Soviet times.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were jailed from 3 1/2 to five years by a court in the town of Petushki, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Moscow. They were arrested in October 2023 on charges of involvement with extremist groups, as Navalny’s networks were deemed by authorities.
The case was widely seen as a way to increase pressure on the opposition to discourage defense lawyers from taking political cases.
At the time, Navalny was serving a 19-year prison term on several criminal convictions, including extremism. He died in a Russian prison camp in February 2023.
The independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that Kobzev said in his final statement in court on Jan. 10 that “we are being tried for transmitting Navalny’s thoughts to other people.”
That ruling, which exposed anyone involved with the organizations to prosecution, was condemned by Kremlin critics as politically motivated and designed to stifle Navalny’s activities.
According to Navalny’s allies, authorities accused the lawyers of using their position to pass information from him to his team.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in 2021 upon his return from Germany, where he was recuperating from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He was ordered to serve 2 1/2 years in prison.
After two more trials, his sentence was extended to 19 years. He and his allies said the charges were politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to jail him for life.
In December 2023, Navalny was moved from a penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow to one above the Arctic Circle, where he died in February at the age of 47 under still-unexplained circumstances. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and members of his team alleged he was killed on orders from the Kremlin. Officials have rejected the accusation.
Two other Navalny lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov, are on a wanted list but no longer live in Russia. Mikhailova, who defended Navalny for a decade, said she was charged in absentia with extremism.
Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin have been deemed to be political prisoners, according to human rights advocates from Memorial, Russia’s most prominent rights group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. The group demands their immediate release.
