Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader who died in prison in February 2024, was murdered by the Kremlin using a rare and lethal toxin found in South American poison dart frogs, five European countries announced Saturday, February,14, 2026. The UK, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said laboratory analysis of Navalny's body samples "conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine"—a neurotoxin from Ecuadorian dart frogs that is 200 times more powerful than morphine and not naturally found in Russia. "Only the Russian government had the means, motive, and opportu

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader who died in prison in February 2024, was murdered by the Kremlin using a rare and lethal toxin found in South American poison dart frogs, five European countries announced Saturday, February,14, 2026.

The UK, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said laboratory analysis of Navalny's body samples "conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine"—a neurotoxin from Ecuadorian dart frogs that is 200 times more powerful than morphine and not naturally found in Russia.

"Only the Russian government had the means, motive, and opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison," British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said at the Munich Security Conference, where Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya stood alongside European officials.

"I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with a chemical weapon," Navalnaya wrote on social media, calling Putin "a murderer who must be held accountable."

Navalny, 47, was serving a 30-year sentence in an Arctic prison when Russia's prison service reported in February 2024 that he died after feeling unwell following a walk. Russian authorities claimed natural causes.

The toxin causes shortness of breath, convulsions, seizures, slowed heart rate, and death. European scientists believe it was manufactured in a lab specifically to kill Navalny, as epibatidine doesn't exist naturally in Russia.

This was Navalny's second poisoning. In 2020, he was poisoned with Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent while campaigning in Siberia. He survived after being evacuated to Germany for months of treatment. Five months after recovering, he bravely returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned until his death.

The five countries reported Russia to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for breaching the Chemical Weapons Convention.

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