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More questions than answers. Navalny’s widow says lab tests confirmed he was poisoned, but details are scarce. Here’s what we know and what we don’t.
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The late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s associates have made a new breakthrough in their investigation into his death. On Wednesday, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, released a video announcing that her team had obtained samples of Navalny’s biomaterials taken in 2024 and managed to smuggle them abroad. They then sent these samples to laboratories in two different Western countries for testing, and according to Navalnaya, both analyses confirmed that Navalny was poisoned. At the same time, she said the laboratories have refused to release the findings due to unspecified “political concerns.” While her announcement reveals new details, it also raises fresh questions. Meduza examines the three most pressing ones.
What new information did Navalnaya reveal?
Following Alexey Navalny’s death in February 2024 at a remote Arctic penal colony in the village of Kharp, his allies managed to smuggle biological samples abroad. According to his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, laboratories in two Western countries independently confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned. She did not name the countries or laboratories involved.
In her video, Navalnaya said she learned about the toxicology results several months ago. However, the family was never given official documentation because, as she put it, “there are no legal grounds for that.” She added that both labs declined to publish their findings due to unspecified “political concerns.”
Navalny’s team has consistently alleged that he was murdered. Just three days after his death, Navalnaya released a video statement directly accusing Vladimir Putin of orchestrating the killing, vowing to expose “who exactly carried out this crime and how.”
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Six months later, authorities in the region where Navalny died formally declined to open a criminal investigation. The official report, sent to Navalnaya, attributed his death to a “combined illness” — listing conditions such as cholecystitis, pancreatitis, and a herniated disc. It concluded that his death was “arrhythmogenic in nature,” caused by a “critical spike in blood pressure.” Prior to this, Russian state media and the Kharp prison administration had claimed he died of “natural causes,” such as a blood clot or “sudden death syndrome.”
In September 2024, the investigative outlet The Insider reported that it had obtained hundreds of official documents related to Navalny’s death. According to the outlet, in his final hours, Navalny experienced abdominal pain, vomiting, and convulsions. The Insider alleged that officials deliberately removed references to symptoms that contradicted the state’s version of events.
Dr. Alexander Polupan, the intensive care physician who treated Navalny following his Novichok poisoning in 2020, told The Insider that the symptoms described “can hardly be explained by anything other than poisoning,” and suggested they pointed to an organophosphate compound.
Navalny’s team also published photos from his cell taken on the day of his death. Puddles of vomit are visible on the floor. The official ruling acknowledges that Navalny vomited shortly before his death and that biological samples were taken from the cell. The footage can be seen as confirmation of The Insider’s investigation.
Navalnaya also said that her husband’s allies had collected testimony from five staff members at the Kharp colony. While she did not specify how these accounts were obtained, she summarized their content: Navalny reportedly complained of burning pain in his chest and abdomen, had a severe cough, groaned in pain, and experienced convulsions in the hours leading up to his death.
Read more about Navalnaya’s video
She argued that the convulsions were a clear sign of poisoning — yet they were not mentioned in the autopsy report. Navalny’s team believes they explain the bruises found on his elbows and knees, as well as the hemorrhage near his temple. According to the autopsy, the head injury occurred 30–40 minutes before death. “Alexey was seizing and hitting the floor — that’s most likely the source of those marks,” Navalnaya said.
The team also points to the absence of surveillance footage from Navalny’s final day, despite the fact that he was under constant watch. According to the prison layout diagram shown by Navalnaya, there were 63 cameras installed in the block where he was held. She believes the missing footage “must contain something that flatly contradicts the official version” of his death.
First question
What were the biomaterial samples—and what might the analysis have revealed?
We don’t know for sure.
In her statement, Yulia Navalnaya did not specify what kind of biological materials from Navalny the team had tested.
Ivan Zhdanov, the former director of the Navalny-founded Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), told Meduza he knows exactly which samples were sent abroad, but declined to provide details.
In modern toxicology, many types of materials can be used to detect the presence of toxins — including vomit, fragments of clothing, skin swabs, hair, and nail clippings. In postmortem analysis, virtually any bodily tissue can potentially yield evidence, depending on the poison in question.
The usefulness of a sample depends heavily on the suspected substance. For example, in cases of chronic heavy metal poisoning — which does not appear to apply here — hair is often used, as metals accumulate there over time and resist degradation.
But for detecting fast-acting nerve agents like sarin or compounds from the Novichok family, hair is of little use. The most relevant materials in such cases are blood, plasma, and urine.
Blood contains enzymes known as cholinesterases, which are inhibited by organophosphate nerve agents. One enzyme in particular, butyrylcholinesterase, is commonly tested to detect such poisoning. Additionally, proteins like blood albumin can bind to the breakdown products of these agents.
Looking back at Navalny’s life
Even after the original poison has degraded, its chemical signature can often still be detected in the blood using mass spectrometry — a method that can identify the molecular traces left behind. This is how laboratories accredited by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the use of Novichok in Navalny’s 2020 poisoning.
Marc-Michael Blum, a former OPCW official who investigated the Skripal poisoning, has noted that blood plasma can retain detectable signs of organophosphates for six to eight weeks.
However, it’s important to note that there is currently no evidence to suggest that the poison used in the attack that led to Navalny’s death was another nerve agent. Therefore, we also can’t assume that the biological samples Yulia Navalnaya referred to in her statement were blood or urine. They could have been any number of other samples; at this point, we simply don’t know.
In a comment to TV Rain, chemist Vil Mirzayanov — who worked on the Soviet Union’s secret Novichok program — speculated that Navalny may have been poisoned with a new compound from a known chemical class, possibly carbamates.
Carbamates are a broad group of chemicals defined by a particular molecular structure. Like organophosphates, some carbamates can act as nerve agents by inhibiting cholinesterase. The group ranges from relatively weak inhibitors like carbaryl (a widely used insecticide) to extremely toxic variants that rival military-grade agents such as VX.
Navalny’s 2020 poisoning
In 2019, after consultations between the U.S. and Russia, the OPCW added two families of carbamates to Schedule 1 — the list of substances banned for use or production as chemical weapons. But these represent only a fraction of the class: at least 400 toxic carbamate compounds are known. Research into their potential use as weapons dates back to the 1940s, and by the 1970s, the U.S. military had filed patents describing hundreds of such substances.
The inhibitory effect of carbamates, unlike that of organophosphorus compounds (OPCs), is reversible: the fragment of the molecule bound to cholinesterase undergoes hydrolysis within a few hours, which makes it impossible to detect the nature of the toxic agent using the same methods used for OPCs.
The symptoms of carbamate poisoning are similar to those caused by organophosphates and can include vomiting, convulsions, diarrhea, and a rapid heartbeat. However, carbamates typically have a weaker effect on the central nervous system, meaning symptoms like confusion, agitation, seizures, or coma — common with OP agents — are usually less pronounced or absent.
In her statement, Navalnaya also accused Russian security agencies of developing banned chemical and biological weapons, though she did not provide further details.
Second question
Could Navalnaya’s statement have legal consequences (such as a European investigation)?
It seems unlikely.
For a foreign country to launch a criminal investigation into a murder, it needs to have proper legal jurisdiction over the specific case. Typically, a country’s jurisdiction in criminal matters is based on one or both of two principles: the location where the crime occurred, and/or the nationality of the victim or suspect.
Given the facts of Navalny’s death, a foreign state does not have formal grounds to initiate an investigation. Yulia Navalnaya herself acknowledged this in her statement: “A Russian citizen was murdered. He was murdered on Russian soil. All the evidence is there. Western countries have no legal grounds to open or pursue a criminal case.” Those believed to be involved in the poisoning are also likely Russian citizens.
Leadership change at the FBK
Some countries — including Germany, Denmark, and Spain — recognize a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, which allows states to investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of committing serious international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, or enforced disappearances, regardless of where the crimes occurred or the nationalities involved.
A killing can fall under serious violations of international humanitarian law — but only in cases involving a “widespread or systemic attack against any civilian population.” The murder of a single individual would hardly meet that threshold.
This is why Western countries are not in a legal position to investigate Navalny’s death — and why, back in 2020, they did not open a criminal case into his poisoning in Russia, despite his evacuation to Germany for treatment with clear signs of poisoning.
In June 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ruled only that Russian authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation into Navalny’s poisoning — and ordered the Russian government to pay 40,000 euros ($47,000) in damages.
Third question
Navalnaya accused unnamed figures of withholding information about the poisoning for “political reasons.” What does she mean?
We don’t know — and it’s impossible to say for sure.
Navalnaya says that laboratories in two unnamed Western countries are refusing to release the results of postmortem tests on her husband’s biological samples.
Serious men in sharp suits just roll their eyes and say, ‘Well, surely you understand.’ Understand what? That there’s always someone who benefits from making deals behind closed doors. And no one wants an inconvenient truth to come out at the wrong time.
She also called on journalists to demand the release of those test results. According to Navalnaya, some journalists were already aware that such tests were conducted and had even contacted her for comment. It’s likely these inquiries are what prompted her and the FBK to publish a statement now.
Navalny’s posthumous autobiography
Former FBK director Ivan Zhdanov told Meduza that he believes “European countries don’t want to disclose the methods and details of how the analysis was carried out.” (It’s worth noting that in cases involving Novichok, the analytical methods and procedures are well-documented in scientific literature.)
In 2020, a German military lab was the first to detect a Novichok-class nerve agent in Navalny’s system. At the request of the German government, the findings were later confirmed by defense ministry laboratories in France and Sweden. They were also independently verified by the OPCW. While the OPCW is headquartered in the Netherlands, its network includes affiliated labs across many Western countries, including Belgium, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., and Australia.
If Navalny was again poisoned with a nerve agent, it’s plausible that the laboratories Navalnaya refers to are located in some of these countries. But why they might choose not to disclose their findings remains unclear — as do the precise “political reasons” Navalnaya believes are behind the silence.
Navalnaya urged journalists to demand transparency — but it remains uncertain which specific countries or organizations those demands should be directed toward.
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