Navalny's widow says Western tests show he died of poisoning.

MoscowTwo Western laboratories Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny confirmed poisoning, according to his widow, Yulia Navalnaya. In a video published this Wednesday, the activist explains that her husband's biological samples were sent abroad shortly after his death. Died in a penal colony on February 16, 2024, and that at least two scientific teams have independently reached the same conclusion.

This evidence gives Navalny's family new arguments to insist on the theory they have defended from the beginning: that Aleksei was assassinated on the orders of Vladimir Putin. "Putin couldn't allow him to live after laughing at him, surviving the first Novichok poisoning [in 2020], and telling the world who poisoned him and why," Navalnaia says.

However, his widow regrets that laboratories do not want to make public the analysis of the Russian opposition leader's biological samples, citing "political considerations." According to Navalnaia, powerful people fear that "an inopportune truth will come to light at the wrong time" and that hinder the rapprochement between the United States and Russia"There will always be someone who prefers to make a pact with Putin, but you won't appease them. While you remain silent, he won't stop," she concludes. Therefore, Navalnaya asks the institutions that conducted the tests to reveal which poison ended her husband's life.

New witnesses

The official version stated that Navalny had suffered a "sudden death" caused by an arrhythmia, but his wife brought up witness accounts from several officials at the Arctic prison where the dissident spent his final days, which raises new questions. Their statements about what happened on the morning of February 16, 2024, contradict each other: while some claim that the prisoner complained of leg pain, the center's chief doctor maintains that he received no request from Navalny.

According to witnesses, after his morning walk, the inmate reported that he felt ill, but they didn't take him to a doctor. Instead, he was taken back to the punishment cell where he was being held in isolation. Navalny then lay on the floor, moaned in pain, and began convulsing and vomiting. One official admits that, at that moment, he closed the cell door, left, and left him alone to die. In the video, Navalnaia shows for the first time the state of the cell after her husband's death.

The forensic report acknowledges that paramedics did not treat him until forty minutes after he reported feeling unwell, when he was already unconscious. According to the independent Russian media outlet The Insider, this report was cut from its official version and the paragraphs explaining the symptoms indicating that Navalny could have been poisoned were removed.

The missing security footage

Navalnaya also criticizes the disappearance of security camera footage from the penal colony on the morning of February 16, despite the fact that the prisoner was being recorded at all times. "Apparently, the images contain something that doesn't fit with the official version; otherwise, they would be playing them endlessly on state television," she argues.

Putin said, a month after Navalny's death, that he had approved the exchange of the opposition leader for another Russian prisoner serving a sentence in a Western jail. "I agreed. Unfortunately, what happened happened," the Russian leader asserted in the first intervention in which he was heard calling Navalny by name. However, his collaborators claim that the Kremlin leader decided to end the politician's life to prevent his release.

A US intelligence report leaked to the Wall Street JournalIn April 2024, the court concluded that the Russian president had "probably" not directly ordered the dissident's murder, although it did not absolve him of any responsibility. Joe Biden, then US president, did not hesitate to point the finger at Putin.

On Tuesday, a court again rejected the request of the opposition leader's mother to open a criminal case for the alleged murder of her son. The Russian Investigative Committee, an investigative body analogous to the Prosecutor's Office, has repeatedly rejected the request of Navalny's relatives, and they therefore turned to the courts. However, the judge also found that the case "does not affect their rights or interests."