Navalny's Mother Demands Justice as European Probe Confirms Poisoning in Opposition Leader's Death

 

On the second anniversary of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's death in an Arctic penal colony, his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, expressed vindication and called for justice following a recent assessment by five European countries concluding that he was poisoned.

Speaking to reporters, including AFP, outside the Borisovo Cemetery in Moscow where Navalny is buried, Lyudmila Navalnaya stated: "We knew that our son did not simply die in prison, he was murdered." She added, "I think it will take some time, but we will find out who did it. Of course, we want this to happen in our country, and we want justice to prevail."

The comments came after Britain, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands issued a joint statement on Saturday, February 14, 2026, asserting that laboratory analyses of samples from Navalny's body "conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine," a lethal neurotoxin found in the skin of South American poison dart frogs and not naturally occurring in Russia. The governments stated that, given the toxin's potency and Navalny's reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death on February 16, 2024.

Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, died at age 47 while serving a 19-year sentence on charges widely viewed as politically motivated. Russian authorities have maintained that his death resulted from natural causes.

The Kremlin swiftly rejected the European findings as baseless, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling them a "Western propaganda hoax."

The European assessment has reignited international scrutiny of Navalny's death, which followed his earlier survival of a 2020 poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent, which he and allies attributed to the Russian state. Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has also described the poisoning as proven and blamed Putin directly, calling for accountability.