The poisoning hypothesis has always been the prevailing one for the death of dissident Alexey Navalny, but now the accusations against Russia become more precise. For Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, it would have been killed with a toxin obtained from the skin of the arrow frog, an amphibian widespread in South America.
What is it about? We are talking about a toxin that is as rare as it is deadly, extracted from a tiny frog that lives in South America. It is called “epibatidine” and is synthesized by the dendrobatid family, known as “arrow frogs”, native to South America.
The powerful poison
Arrow frogs have the distinction of being the most venomous vertebrates known, more so than any snake species. The lethal serum sits on the skin and covers the body as a thin film of liquid, giving the already vibrant colors a shiny appearance.
Indigenous communities in Ecuador collect the poison and use it for hunting. In fact, epibatidine acts on the nervous system, causing muscle paralysis and respiratory arrest, with fatal effects. What characterizes the dart frog is its small size – we are talking about a few centimeters – and the intense colours, from red to orange, to yellow up to an electric blue which makes it difficult for it to hide or camouflage itself.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia “had the means, the motive and the opportunity to administer this poison to him”, denounce Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands, who say they base their conclusions “on the analysis of samples” from the body of the Russian opponent.
The story
Navalny died two years ago, in the Siberian prison above the Arctic Circle where he was held. He had been sentenced to 19 years in prison for “extremism” charges and had repeatedly reported being the victim of abuse in prison.
Already in 2020, four years before his death, Navalny had been treated in Berlin for what Western experts indicate as a poisoning by Novichok – a military-grade nerve toxin – suffered in Siberia and for which the Kremlin secret services suspect. Despite knowing that he would end up in prison – as suggested by the politically motivated charges that the Russian authorities continued to churn out against him in those months – in January 2021 Navalny left Germany and returned to Moscow, where he was arrested as soon as he set foot at the airport. Then, from behind bars, he continued to criticize the regime and the military aggression of Russian troops against Ukraine even as the Kremlin continued to tighten its repression of dissent to the maximum.
For the death of Putin’s number one rival, Russian opponents have always pointed the finger at the Kremlin. In late 2024, The Insider newspaper reported that it had studied “hundreds of documents related to the death” of Navalny, claiming that “the contents” of those documents demonstrate that “Russian authorities have consistently removed references to symptoms” such as stomach pains, vomiting and seizures “that prison doctors had noted Navalny was suffering from.” And which, according to the newspaper, would “clearly indicate that Navalny was poisoned”.
Moscow denies being responsible for his death and responds by speaking of “innuendos aimed at diverting attention from the urgent problems of the West”.