Navalnaya said in a video posted on YouTube that Western laboratories concluded Navalny died from poisoning. She accused Russian intelligence services of developing banned chemical and biological weapons and urged the laboratories to release their findings publicly, but she provided no technical details.
“In February 2024, we obtained Alexei’s biological samples and moved them abroad,” she said. “Laboratories in at least two countries independently analyzed them and concluded Alexei was poisoned.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of Navalnaya’s accusations that her husband was poisoned in a Russian prison.
Navalnaya questioned why no surveillance footage has been released from the penal colony block and cell where Navalny was held, saying numerous cameras were installed there. If the official account of natural causes were true, she argued, authorities would have already shown video of Navalny walking, falling ill, receiving resuscitation attempts and dying.
“Apparently there is something on those recordings that completely contradicts the official version,” she said, adding that otherwise the footage would be broadcast on national television.
She criticized politicians and decision-makers whom she said are trying to curry favor with Putin. “As long as you remain silent, he won’t stop,” she said, warning that “someone else may be dying right now from poison ordered by Putin — not only in Russia, but around the world.” The only way to confront him, she said, is “courage.”
Navalnaya demanded the publication of investigative findings specifying the substance used to kill her husband.
“I demand this for myself, for our children, for Alexei’s parents, for our supporters in Russia and for everyone in the world who fights for freedom and truth,” she said.
Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger and Kremlin critic, was arrested in 2021 after returning to Russia from treatment in Germany following an earlier poisoning attempt attributed to the authorities.
He received a series of sentences totaling more than 30 years and spent over 300 days in a punishment cell while held in a penal colony in Russia’s far North. Prison authorities reported his death on February 16, 2024.
(jh)
Source: PAP, Reuters