Lab tests show Russian opposition leader was poisoned, his wife says

Tests by two foreign laboratories show that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned before his death in an Arctic penal colony last year, his wife said Wednesday.

Russia’s prison service reported in Feb. 2024 that Navalny died after feeling unwell following a walk around the high-security facility in a remote town above the Arctic Circle where he was serving a combined 30 ½-year jail sentence.

He was 47.

His wife, Yuliya Navalnaya, has since taken up the mantle of his struggle against official corruption and President Vladimir Putin’s government that saw him survive several poisoning attempts.

She posted a video on X early Wednesday in which she said that she had managed to have lab tests conducted in a bid to confirm the suspicion he died at the hands of the Kremlin.

“We managed to transfer Alexei’s biological materials abroad,” Navalnaya wrote on X.

“Laboratories in two different countries conducted examinations. These laboratories, independently of each other, concluded that Alexei was poisoned.”

Navalnaya did not give any further details on the tests, or which countries were involved. In her video message she said her husband’s biological materials were “smuggled abroad.”

“I demand that the laboratories that conducted the analyses publish their results” she added, before appearing to accuse them of “pandering to Putin on account of so-called higher considerations.”

NBC News has reached out to Russia’s foreign ministry for comment.

News of Navalny’s death drew outrage from the West, where many leaders blamed Putin. Former President Joe Biden said he was “both not surprised and outraged.”

The Kremlin responded, decrying what it said were “absolutely rabid statements.”

Navalny’s team said afterward that his mother and lawyers were denied access to his body and were told the probe into what killed him had been extended.

Navalnaya accused the Kremlin of hiding his body to cover up killing him. He had previously been poisoned with a military nerve agent while on a business trip in Russia in 2020 — an attempt on his life that he blamed directly on Putin.

Navalny’s body was finally returned a week after his death, and thousands turned out to mourn him at a funeral in Moscow.

Hundreds of people were detained in the days after Navalny’s death for simply laying flowers in his honor at memorials around Russia.