Mysterious death in Russian custody
There is probably evidence of Navalny’s poisoning
02/14/2026 – 1:41 p.mReading time: 1 min.
The Russian dissident Navalny died in Russian custody in 2024. Officially due to a “combination of illnesses”. There is now evidence of his poisoning.
The countries of Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands presented evidence on Saturday that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died in Russian custody as a result of poisoning. Accordingly, the substance epibatidine was detected in Navalny’s corpse samples – a poison that occurs in poison dart frogs. This was reported by the magazine “Der Spiegel”.
The five countries presented the evidence on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. Corresponding tissue samples were secretly taken from Navalny after his death in 2024 and taken out of Russia, it was said.
Navalny died in Russian custody in 2024. He had previously survived a poison attack in 2020. At the urging of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), the Russian opposition activist was flown to Germany and treated at the Berlin Charité. But after his recovery, he returned to Russia to continue his fight against corruption in President Vladimir Putin’s country.
He was arrested and detained again in January 2021. The authorities had therefore initiated proceedings to enforce a suspended sentence that had already been imposed in 2014. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemned this procedure as unlawful at the beginning of February.
