Russian opposition leader's widow Yulia Navalny accuses the Kremlin of poisoning her husband before his death in a Russian Arctic prison. Image credit: CNN.
(The Post News) – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s widow has again implicated the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin directly of complicity in her husband’s death, saying new evidence reaffirms that he was poisoned before he died in prison.
In an X-posted video, Yulia Navalnaya has stated that Navalny’s corpse was smuggled out of Russia and had biological samples secretly analyzed in two foreign labs. Both of the labs, she said, concluded that Navalny had been poisoned, though their conclusions have not been published due to “political considerations.”
“Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said. “The killers worked hard to erase traces. But we were able to preserve some traces.”
Suspicious Death in Arctic Penal Colony
Navalny, who was 47 at the time of his death, was Russia’s most prominent opposition politician and died in February 2024 in a high-security Arctic prison. The government claimed he was walking when he collapsed and died of natural causes, later blaming his death on a combination of illnesses and an irregular heart rhythm.
Navalnaya countered those accounts, citing that her husband had no history of heart disease. His body was denied protection from his family for nearly a week before it was finally released under pressure.
She insisted on answers in her latest video on why jail authorities never showed any surveillance video from the day he died. She also showed photos of Navalny’s cell allegedly taken on the day, where there are images of vomit on the floor.
The Kremlin has consistently denied any role. On Wednesday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov could not comment on Navalnaya’s latest allegations.
U.S. officials earlier said they did not think Putin was directly involved, though Washington condemned Moscow for the way it treated political prisoners.
Poison Attacks on Alexei
Navalny’s death was a repeat of the poisoning in 2020 by the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent. He became ill on a domestic flight and was airlifted to Berlin while in a coma. The poisoning was confirmed by German, French, Swedish, and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons laboratories. Russia denied any involvement.
Even after the attack, Navalny returned to Moscow in 2021 and was immediately arrested. He was serving a 30 ½-year prison term, which most viewed as politically motivated, at the time of his assassination.
Navalnaya appealed to the foreign laboratories to release their findings. “Stop appeasing Putin for some higher ‘considerations,'” she urged. “While you remain silent, he does not stop.”
She promised to continue her husband’s political struggle. In an interview this year, Navalnaya called his memoir, Patriot, which he penned while in prison, his final act of defiance.
“It was his minute-by-minute mission to battle Putin’s regime,” she said. “I would rather he struggle not from death.”.
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