Alexei Navalny's widow says lab reports show her husband was poisoned
[September 18, 2025]
The widow of Alexei Navalny said Wednesday that two
independent labs have found that her husband was poisoned shortly before
his death in a Russian prison.
Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive
anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died
in the Arctic penal colony in February 2024. He was serving a 19-year
sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.
Authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk but have
otherwise given few details on his death. He was 47.
In a video released Wednesday, Yulia Navalnaya said that biological
samples from Navalny’s body had been taken out of Russia and tested at
two laboratories abroad.
She said that both laboratories concluded that Navalny had been
poisoned, but had not released their findings due to “political
considerations."
“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion:
Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said
in the video, which was posted on social media.
In the clip, she questioned the lack of video footage from the prison
and showed images purported to be of Navalny's cell on the day of his
death showing vomit on the floor. She did not provide direct proof that
Navalny had been poisoned or that it had been carried out by prison
authorities.
“I demand that the laboratories that conducted the research publish
their results," she said. "Stop appeasing Putin for some higher
‘considerations.’ You cannot placate him. While you stay silent, he does
not stop,” Navalnaya said.
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Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
walks away from his picture after lighting a candle at the end of a
service in St. Mary's Church on the occasion of his birthday, in
Berlin, June 4, 2024. (Christoph Gollnow/dpa/dpa via AP, File)
Navalnaya has repeatedly blamed Putin for Navalny's death, something
Russian officials have vehemently denied.
In a press conference Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov
said he was not aware of Navalnaya's statement and said that he
could not comment.
Navalnaya said in August 2024 that she was told by Russian
investigators that Navalny died from a combination of “a dozen
different diseases” and that he finally succumbed to arrhythmia, or
an irregular heartbeat.
Navalnaya disputed Russian officials’ version of events and said her
husband exhibited no instances of heart disease while alive.
Navalny previously suffered from another poisoning in 2020, when the
opposition leader fell sick on an internal flight in Russia. He was
flown to Berlin while still in a coma for treatment two days later.
Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization
for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was
exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities have denied any involvement in the incident, a
claim that Navalny challenged as false.
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