Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a remote Siberian prison two years ago, was almost certainly poisoned with a deadly toxin found in South American dart frogs, five European governments said Saturday.
A joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said they were “confident” Navanly had been poisoned after an analysis of samples taken from his body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” and that the Russian government was the likely culprit.
“Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him,” it continued.
The five countries said they were reporting the case to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging Russia violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russian authorities had previously claimed Navalny, 47, died of natural causes while serving several sentences totaling more than 30 years at a high-security prison above the Arctic Circle.
“Scientists from five European countries have established: my husband, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with epibatidine—a neurotoxin, one of the deadliest poisons on earth. In nature, this poison can be found on the skin of the Ecuadorian dart frog. It causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death,” she said.
“I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon. 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.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the poisoning shows that “Vladimir Putin is prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to remain in power. France pays tribute to this opposition figure, killed for his fight in favor of a free and democratic Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper added: "Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison. We are here today to shine a spotlight on the Kremlin’s barbaric attempt to silence Alexei Navalny’s voice.”
Russia announced Navalny’s death on Feb. 16, 2024, just as that year’s Munich Security Conference opened. On that day, Navalnaya delivered a speech, pledging that Putin “would pay for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband.” After a weeklong dispute over custody, Russia released Navalny’s body to his mother.
You're using words in a meaningless way. Dictators rule by dictate. Russia is a functioning bureaucratic republic. Putin, by definition, is not a dictator.
Individuals are not imperialist except in so far as they support imperial ideology. Imperialism, as a historical phenomenon, is still fundamentally dominated by the same handful of countries that dominated 80% of the world - Spain, France, Portugal, Britain, and The Netherlands - all seated and combined with the economic and military might of their former colony America. NATO is predominantly armed by these same countries for the most part. Russia has always been a target of the Western imperialists, even when it was a lesser imperial power under the Tsar. But today? No. Russia is not imperialist. It literally does not have the capabilities to be imperialist. In so far as it is in fighting with the US via the US's proxy of Ukraine, it is an inter-capitalist war, but not an inter-imperilaist war.
Despot is the word you're looking for. Putin is a despot. He uses the legal bureaucratic power of the state in ways that make people miserable, that hurt people, that enrich his friends and advance his own interests. He's a corrupt despot but not an imperialist dictator. The Pope is more of an imperialist dictator than Putin is.
I never said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's not hypocrisy. My assessment of the situation is that Russia has legitimate national security concerns. In so far as Russia is in involved in an armed conflict with the imperial core, I hope Russia wins. But I do not support Russia creating colonies or neocolonies, engaging in debt entrapment of third world countries and exploiting their resources to their detriment, or using its monopolies to engage in collaborative management of the world's natural resources with imperial partners. These things that I just described are the things imperialists do, and they are things done today by USA, Britain, and France, predominantly (although some other former European empires still do to a lesser extent). Russia does not do these things.
Does Putin secretly harbor imperial ambitions? I don't have access to his pillow book so I can't say. What I can say is that he tried to join the imperial club when he first took office. He worked closely with the US and Western Europe, built trade relationships, built military alliances, and petitioned multiple times to become part of the club. But the imperialists kept expanding NATO, kept developing it specifically to counter Russia, and eventually told him to go pound sand. And since then, I would say it's very clear that not only is he not an imperialist, but even if he was ideologically, there is no path for Russia to become imperialist. Their challenge as of the early 2000's went from "rebuild capitalism in Russia and join the rest of the capitalists" to "survive the inevitable onslaught of the West as they attempt to extract every single ounce of wealth from Russia up to and including through full military invasion".
And honestly I think the West almost did it. If it wasn't for China becoming an economic super power and using that position to build BRICS, I think Russia would have been a neocolony of the USA by 2050 at the latest.
But today? Today we watch Russia fighting for its future and we condemn the US for its use of Ukraine as a proxy, for putting the lives of Ukrainians at a lower priority than strategic expansion of Western military dominance over Asia, and we call for it to stop being an existential threat to so many nations in the world. And if Russia is going to help stop that expansion by fighting against US interests, we offer critical support. We are critical of Russian use of cluster munitions, of their handling of civilians, of their destruction of civilian infrastructure, of their repression of their own people inside Russia, of their violation of law and of human dignity. We are critical, yes, but we do not call for military intervention to stop them. Their crimes do not rise to the level of the crimes of imperialism, which is the primary threat to all human life on earth today.