A makeshift memorial to the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny outside the Russian Embassy in Riga, Latvia, 16 February 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE/TOMS KALNINS
The death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in an Arctic penal colony in February appears to have been the result of poisoning, according to an investigation by Russian independent media outlet The Insider that was published on Sunday.
The Insider said that the “hundreds of official documents” linked to Navalny’s case it had reviewed included two contradictory accounts of how Navalny died, with one version saying that, after leaving his prison cell for a walk, Navalny lay on the ground, complained of stomach pains and began vomiting and having convulsions before losing consciousness.
Those details were removed from a subsequent version of events that were provided to his widow Yulia Navalnaya in August, noting only that Navalny had felt a “sharp decline in health” and that the final cause of his death was “arrhythmia” brought on by a “combination of illnesses”.
Alexander Polupan, a doctor who had treated Navalny in a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk after he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020, said that arrhythmia would not have caused the abdominal pain, vomiting and convulsions experienced by Navalny and that the symptoms described in the documents obtained by The Insider could “hardly be explained by anything other than poisoning”.
The Insider also cited another document — a list of items collected by investigators looking into Navalny’s death — which contained mention of “vomit samples” sent for examination, though no mention of vomit was made in the final paperwork linked to his death.
The authorities “deliberately removed any mention of symptoms that did not fit the official narrative” of how Navalny died, The Insider concluded, adding that other facts, including the penal colony’s initial refusal to hand Navalny’s body over to his family for burial, also suggested that the authorities were trying to conceal the true cause of the politician’s death.
Navalnaya has previously accused the authorities of not disclosing the details of her husband’s death, saying that he had complained of stomach pains before collapsing in the prison colony, and calling the diagnosis of arrhythmia an “act of mockery” and a “pathetic attempt” to cover up his murder.
