The wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has revealed that her husband was poisoned while serving a prison sentence in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024.
Yulia Navalnaya said laboratory analysis of smuggled biological samples confirmed that Navalny’s death was caused by poisoning.
Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had been serving a 19-year sentence on charges widely seen as politically motivated. He had previously survived a nerve-agent poisoning in 2020 and was evacuated to Germany for treatment.
In a video shared on social media, Navalnaya explained that before Navalny was buried in Moscow, allies obtained biological samples that were analyzed abroad.
Laboratories in two countries reportedly concluded that Navalny had been killed through poisoning. She called on the labs to publicly release their findings and identify the exact poison used.
Photos allegedly showing Navalny’s prison cell after his death were also released, depicting a pool of vomit and suggesting he had suffered convulsions.
Navalny’s ally Maria Pevchikh said the opposition leader was left unattended while in severe pain, locked in his cell.
The Kremlin has not commented on the allegations. Navalnaya accused President Putin of ordering her husband’s murder, a claim the Russian government denies.
Since Navalny’s death, authorities have intensified crackdowns on his supporters, branding them as extremists and imprisoning some of his lawyers and journalists.
Navalny’s family and many of his close allies now live abroad, while public dissent in Russia has sharply declined amid censorship and increased government control following the invasion of Ukraine.
The revelations add to long-standing concerns about the treatment of political prisoners and the suppression of opposition voices in Russia.
