Yulia Navalnaya says lab tests show Alexei Navalny was poisoned in prison

Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said that foreign laboratory tests on biological samples obtained from her husband showed that he was poisoned.

Navalny, 47, died suddenly on February 16, 2024, in a Russian prison in the Arctic Circle, depriving the opposition of its most charismatic and popular leader.

Yulia has repeatedly accused Russia of killing him, a claim the Kremlin dismisses as nonsense.  

She posted a video on X in which she said that biological material from Navalny was smuggled abroad in 2024 and that two laboratories examined the material.

“These labs in two different countries reached the same conclusion: Alexei was killed. More specifically, he was poisoned,” Navalnaya said.

She demanded that the laboratories release their findings about what she called the “inconvenient truth.” She did not specify what poison the laboratories had found.

Last year, Navalnaya dismissed information from Russian investigators that Navalny had died from “a combination of diseases.”

In her video, Navalnaya described her husband’s last moments. He felt ill in a small exercise cell and was crouched on the ground in pain, she said. But he was then put in a punishment cell.

“Alexei lay on the floor and pulled his knees up to his stomach and moaned in pain,” she said. “He said his chest and stomach were burning. Then he began to vomit.”

She showed a picture of what she said was the cell. It showed a pile of vomit on the floor.

Navalnaya said that the truth about her husband’s death was inconvenient for some unidentified politicians in the West, but gave no specifics.

Navalny survived an apparent poisoning in 2020, when he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk, in Siberia, to Moscow. The pilot made an emergency landing, saving his life, and Navalny was flown to Berlin, where he was treated for the effects of a neurotoxin that German military tests showed to be Novichok, a poison developed in the Soviet Union.

Widow, allies under threat in Russia

A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs which exposed what he said was vast corruption across the Russian elite, and he lampooned the opulent lifestyle of President Vladimir Putin’s elite and senior Russian officials.

Navalny was detained countless times for organizing public rallies and prosecuted repeatedly on charges including corruption, embezzlement and fraud. He said the accusations and convictions were politically motivated.

Despite his death, Russian investigators have continued to launch new cases against his supporters and associates, many of whom have been designated as “foreign agents” or “extremists.”

Navalnaya, who lives abroad, has been subject to an arrest warrant in Russia since last year for being an alleged extremist.

In January, three lawyers who had worked for Navalny were found guilty of belonging to an extremist group and sentenced to up to five and a half years in a penal colony.

In April, four journalists were sentenced to five-and-a-half years each after being found guilty of working for Navalny’s banned organization.