Overview
- Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory analyses detected epibatidine in Navalny’s samples and judged it the likely cause of death.
- The governments asserted Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer the toxin while Navalny was held in an Arctic penal colony.
- The UK lodged a complaint with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
- Russia maintains Navalny died of natural causes, and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed the five-country announcement as information manipulation.
- Officials did not disclose how the toxin was obtained or delivered; epibatidine occurs in certain wild South American poison-dart frogs and is not known to exist naturally in Russia.