The UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands announced jointly this weekend that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with epibatidine — a neurotoxin derived from South American poison dart frogs, classified as a chemical weapon, and described as up to 200 times more potent than morphine. The conclusion, released on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, is based on analyses of biological samples smuggled out of Russia by Alexei Navalny's allies.
Russia, predictably, dismissed the findings as Western propaganda.
The five-nation statement pulls no punches on attribution. It concluded that "only the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law" to carry out the poisoning. Navalny died on February 16, 2024, aged 47, inside a remote Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges. Russian prison authorities told his mother he had experienced "sudden death syndrome."
According to the Daily Mail, Epibatidine is not a substance you stumble across in the Russian Arctic. First isolated by American chemist John W. Daly in the 1970s from frog skin extracts, the toxin is found on poison dart frogs native to South America. A single frog carries enough to kill a water buffalo. Five micrograms per kilogram of body weight achieves the same pain-blocking effect in lab rats that requires a full milligram of morphine, making it roughly 200 times more potent.
The joint statement made the geographic point explicitly:
"Epibatidine is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America. It is not found naturally in Russia."
"There is no innocent explanation for its presence in Navalny's body."
That second line does more work than any editorial gloss could. A toxin that exists on another continent turned up in the body of Vladimir Putin's most prominent political opponent — a man already poisoned once before with a military-grade nerve agent, already imprisoned on charges the West widely regarded as political, already silenced in every way the Russian state could manage short of killing him.
This is not the first time European laboratories have traced a poison in Navalny's system back to Russian state capability. In August 2020, FSB agents poisoned him with Novichok — the same nerve agent deployed in Salisbury, England, in 2018, which killed British citizen Dawn Sturgess. The same five nations condemned that attack at the time.
The joint statement connected the dots directly:
"In both cases, only the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law to carry out the attacks."
Russia claimed in 2017 that it had destroyed all of its chemical weapons. The Foreign Office statement flatly contradicted that claim, expressing concern "that Russia did not destroy all of its chemical weapons." The nations' permanent representatives to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have now formally notified its Director General of a Russian breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The Kremlin's playbook hasn't changed. Deny, deflect, accuse the West. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told TASS that the allegations are "merely propaganda aimed at diverting attention from pressing Western issues," adding that Russia would comment only when "test results are available, and the formulas for the substances are disclosed." She described Navalny as a blogger "officially designated as a terrorist and extremist in Russia."
The Russian Embassy in London offered something darker:
"This isn't a quest for justice, but a mockery of the dead."
A remarkable statement from the diplomatic representatives of the government accused of producing the dead.
Yulia Navalnaya learned of her husband's death at this same conference two years ago. She has spent every day since pressing European governments to release their findings. Last year, she revealed that two independent laboratories had confirmed Navalny was poisoned, though details on the specific toxin were withheld at the time. She challenged the labs publicly to release their results, accusing unnamed Western countries of suppressing the truth for political reasons.
"I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth."
"Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes."
Navalnaya's account of her husband's final hours — drawn from testimony by penal colony employees — paints a grim picture. She has said an ambulance wasn't called until 40 minutes after Navalny became ill. His mother, Lyudmila, was forced to travel between Arctic morgues in sub-zero temperatures to locate his body. She was reportedly told, "Time is not on your side, corpses decompose."
Leaked Russian documents published by an opposition website in 2024 showed symptoms consistent with poisoning and appeared to indicate officials had tried to cover up the cause of death. None of this prompted Moscow to cooperate with an independent investigation. None of it slowed the Kremlin's insistence that Navalny died of natural causes — in prison, under state custody, at 47 years old.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper met with Navalnaya at Munich this weekend and framed the announcement in personal terms:
"Since Yulia Navalnaya announced the loss of her husband here in Munich two years ago, the UK has pursued the truth of Alexei Navalny's death with fierce determination."
"Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this form of poison the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition."
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer added his voice:
"Alexei Navalny displayed huge courage in the face of tyranny. His determination to expose the truth has left an enduring legacy."
The joint statement pledged to "make use of all policy levers at our disposal to continue to hold Russia to account." What those levers are, concretely, remains to be seen. Russia already operates under extensive Western sanctions. The formal notification to the OPCW creates a paper trail, but paper trails have a poor track record of constraining the Kremlin.
This is where the Western response deserves scrutiny beyond the press conference. Identifying the poison is important. Formally attributing the killing to the Russian state matters. But Europe's track record of following attribution with meaningful consequence is thin. The Salisbury poisoning produced diplomatic expulsions and strong words. Navalny's 2020 Novichok poisoning produced condemnations. Neither prevented what happened in that Arctic prison cell in February 2024.
Meanwhile, the movement Navalny built continues to erode. Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny's anti-corruption foundation FBK, left his post last month. Key financial sponsors have withdrawn their backing. Zhdanov captured the mood plainly:
"It's not the same at all without Alexei."
That's the brutal calculus of political assassination. You don't just eliminate the man — you collapse the architecture around him. Navalny was widely seen as the only figure with enough standing and charisma to unite Russia's fragmented opposition. Without him, the fragments drift further apart.
Putin, who studiously avoided naming Navalny while he was alive, offered only that a person's passing was "always a sad event" — a month after the death. Twenty-six years of rule have taught him that opponents can be outlasted, imprisoned, or eliminated, and that the international community will ultimately move on to the next crisis.
Five European nations have now told the world exactly what killed Alexei Navalny. The question that should keep Western capitals uncomfortable is whether knowing — and saying so publicly — will ever be enough to make the next assassination more costly than the last.