The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory analyses found traces of epibatidine — a toxin associated with South American poison dart frogs — in samples linked to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and said Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer it while he was imprisoned. Moscow has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in Navalny’s death.
Alexei Navalny, the most prominent political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died on February 16, 2024, aged 47, while held in a remote Arctic penal colony. Russia’s prison service said at the time that he had collapsed after feeling unwell and could not be revived, and Russian officials have insisted he died of natural causes.
On February 14, 2026, the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands issued a joint statement saying their governments were confident Navalny was poisoned with epibatidine, which they described as a lethal toxin found in some poison dart frogs in South America and “not found naturally in Russia.” They said analyses of samples linked to Navalny “conclusively confirmed” the presence of epibatidine and that, given the substance’s toxicity and Navalny’s reported symptoms, poisoning was “highly likely” the cause of death.
The countries said Navalny died while in Russian custody, which they argued meant the Russian state had the “means, motive and opportunity” to administer the toxin. The announcement was made around the Munich Security Conference, where Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has appeared in previous years following his death.
Western officials did not publicly detail how the samples were obtained or which laboratories carried out the testing, but said they had reported their findings to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), alleging a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Navalnaya welcomed the conclusions, repeating her long-held accusation that Putin was responsible for her husband’s death. She has also pointed to the 2020 poisoning of Navalny with a Novichok nerve agent — an attack that several Western governments have attributed to Russia — after which he was treated in Germany and later returned to Russia, where he was arrested.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the findings showed, in his view, that Moscow was prepared to use chemical weapons against its own citizens to stay in power.
Navalny had been serving a 19-year sentence on extremism-related convictions that he and his supporters said were politically motivated. Russia has dismissed Western allegations about both the 2020 poisoning and Navalny’s 2024 death, and Russian officials have characterized the latest accusations as politically driven.
