Editor's note: This story is being updated.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a dart frog toxin called epibatidine before he died in 2024, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14.
"Only the Russian government had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia," she said. "Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this form of poison, the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition."
Laboratories in the U.K., Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands received Navalny's biological samples after his death and unanimously concluded that he was poisoned with epibatidine, the Insider, an independent Russian media outlet, reported on Feb. 14.
"Scientists from five European countries have determined that my husband, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with epibatidine — a neurotoxin and one of the deadliest poisons on earth," Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya wrote on X. "In nature, this poison can be found on the skin of an Ecuadorian tree frog. It causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death."
She said that she was "certain from the very first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapons."
"I am grateful to the European states for the painstaking work they carried out over two years, and for bringing the truth to light," Navalnaya said. "Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes."
The Kremlin has denied the accusations.
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