Russia rejects European claim of poisoning Alexei Navalny with dart frog toxin

The Kremlin has dismissed European accusations that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a rare South American toxin. The new findings deepen tensions between Russia and Western nations over Navalny's controversial death.

The Kremlin on Monday rejected accusations from five European countries that jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed using a rare toxin derived from South American poison dart frogs, calling the allegations "biased and baseless".

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most fiercest domestic critic, died in February 2024 at the age of 47 in a remote Arctic penal colony. His death came weeks before Russia’s presidential election, which returned Putin to power in a landslide vote that Western governments said lacked fairness and competition.

In a joint statement issued on Saturday, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory analyses of biological samples from Navalny’s body had "conclusively" detected epibatidine -- a potent neurotoxin found in certain poison dart frogs and not naturally present in Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow rejected the findings outright and viewed them as politically motivated.

"We naturally do not accept such accusations. We disagree with them. We consider them biased and baseless,” Peskov told reporters during a regular briefing on Monday. “In fact, we strongly reject them," he added.

Russian authorities, who had already outlawed Navalny’s movement as extremist before his death, have repeatedly rejected his widow Yulia Navalnaya’s accusations that the state killed him, insisting he died of natural causes. In Russia, any mention of Navalny or his exiled anti-corruption foundation can attract prosecution.