Authorities in the UK Government and a group of European allies released a joint assessment on Saturday concluding that Alexei Navalny, who died in 2024, was killed using a poison derived from a dart frog toxin. The statement added that “only the Russian state had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy this lethal toxin”.

Visiting her son’s grave in Moscow on the second anniversary of his death, Lyudmila Navalnaya said the new finding confirmed her long-held belief. “This confirms what we knew from the very beginning,” she said. “We knew that our son did not simply die in prison, he was murdered.”

Navalny’s widow, Yulia, also marked the anniversary and responded to the government’s announcement in a social media post: “We have achieved truth and we will achieve justice one day too.”

The Russian authorities have strongly rejected the accusations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday: “Of course, we do not accept such accusations. We disagree with them, we consider them biased and unfounded. And, in fact, we resolutely reject them.”

Yulia Navalnaya has previously said that laboratories in two countries, working on biological samples smuggled out of Russia, found evidence her husband had been poisoned and urged those facilities to publish their results. The recent UK Government and European statement drew on scientific analysis to reach its conclusions.

Alexei Navalny, once the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was serving a 19-year sentence on an “extremism” conviction when he died at the Polar Wolf penal colony above the Arctic Circle. He was 47. His death followed an earlier suspected poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent in 2020, after which he received treatment in Germany. He returned to Russia in 2021 and was arrested on arrival.

At the time of his death, Russian officials said he had died of natural causes. Authorities initially withheld his body but he was buried in Moscow in March 2024.

Dozens of people in Moscow, along with several foreign diplomats, visited Borisovskoye cemetery on Monday to lay flowers at Navalny’s grave. A note placed on the grave read: “Alexei, we remember you every day”. His funeral in 2024 drew thousands of mourners despite concerns about a police response.

• Navalny built a reputation exposing alleged corruption at the highest levels of government and mobilised large street campaigns.
• Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, authorities have tightened measures against dissent, introducing laws that have led to long prison sentences for anti-government expression.
• Many of Navalny’s associates have been imprisoned or have fled abroad. His widow, who now leads the Anti-Corruption Foundation, lives overseas with their two children and is reported to face the possibility of arrest if she returns to Russia.
• The opposition movement in exile remains divided and has struggled to present a united political front.

Alexei Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, politician, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organizing demonstrations and running for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia, president Vladimir Putin, and Putin’s government.

Moscow, on the Moskva River in western Russia, is the nation’s cosmopolitan capital. In its historic core is the Kremlin, a complex that’s home to the president and tsarist treasures in the Armoury. Outside its walls is Red Square, Russia’s symbolic center. It’s home to Lenin’s Mausoleum, the State Historical Museum’s comprehensive collection and St. Basil’s Cathedral, known for its colorful, onion-shaped domes.

The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and the use of force legitimized by the state via the monopoly on violence.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and a former officer of the KGB who has served as President of Russia since 2012, previously holding the position from 1999 until 2008. He was also the Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012.

Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country located in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east, and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the south.

Russia spans more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, stretching eleven time zones, and bordering 16 sovereign nations. Moscow is the country’s capital.

The Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 and since 1993 Russia been governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. Russia is a major great power, with the world’s second-most powerful military, and the fourth-highest military expenditure. As a recognised nuclear-weapon state, the country possesses the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.