The tests show that Navalny was poisoned in prison, says his widow

The wife of the late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny said he was killed by poisoning when he was serving a prison sentence in a criminal colony in the Arctic in 2024.

In a shared video on social networks, Yulia Navalnaya said that the analysis of the biological smuggling samples carried out by laboratories in two countries has shown that her husband had been “murdered”.

It did not provide details on the allegedly used poison, on samples or on the analysis – but challenged the two laboratories to publish their results.

Navalny – An anti -corruption activist and the noisiest opposition chief in Russia – died suddenly in prison on February 16, 2024 at the age of 47.

In 2020, he was poisoned with a nervous agent from Novichok and almost died. Upon his return to Russia, he was arrested at the airport.

At the time of his death, he had been in prison for three years to attenuate the accusations and had recently been transferred to a criminal colony in the Arctic circle.

Navalny supporters and colleagues from its anti-corruption foundation (FBK) have always argued that the Russian government was involved in its disappearance.

Navalnaya said that after the death of her husband in February 2024, her team had been able to “obtain and securely transfer” organic samples abroad and that two laboratories from different countries had concluded that he had been poisoned.

She did not share the location of the laboratories – but she suggested that they did not make their conclusions public because of “political considerations”.

“They don’t want an embarrassing truth to surface at the wrong time,” she said.

Navalnaya also suggested that she would get a decline to try to investigate her husband’s death more: “” You are the wife, of course, but there is no criminal case, there is no legal reason to give you documents. “”

“But I have land. Not legal, but moral.”

She added that Navalny had been her husband, her nearest friend and her person – and “a symbol of hope for a better future for our country”.

“I know that it was also a symbol for you,” she said on images of the Navalny Moscow funeral who attracted thousands of people despite the warnings of the authorities not to attend.

“I will not be silent. I affirm that Vladimir Putin is guilty of having killed my husband, Alexei Navalny … I urge the laboratories that have conducted studies to make the results public.”

On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that he was not aware of Navalnaya’s statements.

In the video published Wednesday, Navalnaya also detailed the last days of her husband on the basis of what she said she was testimony to the employees of the criminal colony, which the BBC was not able to check.

According to her, the day of her death, Navalny was taken for a walk but felt bad. When he was brought back to his cell “He lying on the ground, pulled his knees and started moaning with pain … Then he started to vomit”.

“Alexei had convulsions … The prison guards watched (his) agony through the bars of the cell window,” she said, citing the alleged testimonies.

An ambulance was only called 40 minutes after Navalny fell ill, said his widow, and he died shortly after. Penitentiary authorities later said to his mother Lyudmila that her son had undergone “sudden death syndrome”. Later, state investigators said the death was caused by a medical condition and a Arrythmia.

The Navalny partners shared invisible images before on social networks claiming to show his cell on the day of his death and the small court of exercise where he was authorized to go out.

Vladimir Putin, who carefully avoided navalny when he was alive, briefly referred to him a month after his death by declaring that a person passing was “always a sad event”.

The Russian president also said that he had accepted an exchange of prisoners planned between Navalny and “certain people” detained in Western prisons, provided that Navalny has not returned to Russia.

“But this is life. There is nothing to do,” said Putin.

It is very unlikely that Moscow issues any comments on the death of Navalny.

Its popularity and its safeguarding on the Internet have long rocked the Kremlin, while senior personalities were irritated by its high -level corruption surveys.

With the death of Navalny, Russia lost the last figure of imposing opposition which challenged Putin’s reign.

Many of his partners have been imprisoned or fled Russia. Navalnaya herself faces an arrest, and her two children live abroad.

The repression of civil society increased more after the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, and new punitive laws leading to mass arrests muzzled any opposition.

In life and death, Navalny managed to attract huge crowds to the streets. Thousands of mourning people went for his funeral in Moscow in March 2024 despite the well -founded fears of a police repression.

No large opposition gathering has been held in Russia since.