Widow says Alexey Navalny was killed with toxin identified by five European labs; formal statement expected in Munich

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny, told the news bulletin Настоящее время that independent tests by laboratories in five European countries identified a toxin she said killed her husband.

According to the bulletin’s report summarizing journalists’ findings, investigators from the German magazine Spiegel said the laboratories — described as independent of one another — are in the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The program said those countries could make a joint, formal statement on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

The bulletin said Navalny died in a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle nearly two years ago and that his biological samples were reportedly transferred abroad after his death. The report contrasted the widow’s account and the investigative journalists’ findings with the official Russian explanation: Russian authorities have said Navalny died of a combined illness and a heart rhythm disorder and have declined to open a criminal investigation.

The Spiegel-linked reporting cited by the bulletin said the five countries hold Russia, and personally President Vladimir Putin, responsible because they consider it plausible that only Russian security services had the opportunity to poison Navalny while he was in custody. The program quoted Navalnaya as placing responsibility on Putin and thanking European countries for the investigations.

The bulletin did not provide verbatim quotes from independent laboratories, and it noted that Russian officials have not changed the official cause-of-death statement nor opened a criminal case. The program directed audiences to its website and Telegram channel for further details. The reporting in this bulletin is based on statements attributed in the transcript to Navalnaya and to reporters citing Spiegel; it does not include a separate laboratory report in full.