New Delhi: Speculations surrounding the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been ongoing for some time now. While the Russian authorities maintain he died a natural death due to health issues, critics continue to claim that he was poisoned. Now the UK and some others in Europe have said that he was killed using a deadly toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America.
They claim that traces of epibatidine were found in samples from Navalny’s body. They argue that this likely resulted in his death in a Siberian penal colony two years ago, said the UK Foreign Office. They further said that only the Russian state had the “means, motive and opportunity” to deploy this lethal toxin. Meanwhile the Kremlin, according to Tass news agency, maintains its stance of innocence, dismissing the finding as “an information campaign”.
Navalny and his death
Alexei Navalny was one of Russia’s most popular and influential opposition politicians. An anti-corruption campaigner and a lawyer, he was seen as the most prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On one hand Russian authorities repeatedly prosecuted him on financial and extremism-related charges and he continued his investigations into alleged corruption among Russian political and business elites. By 2021, after recovering abroad from a previous poisoning incident, he returned to Russia but was again arrested and subsequently transferred to a high-security penal colony in the Arctic region. It was here that he died on February 16, 2024. According to the official statement issued by Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, he “felt unwell after a walk,” lost consciousness, and medical staff attempted resuscitation before emergency doctors declared him dead.
The poison theory
After Alexei Navalny’s death, many governments and international organizations made differing claims about the cause of his death to the Russian authorities. While the Russians maintained no foul play was involved, detractors claimed that subsequent laboratory findings suggested poisoning.
The current theory that comes out of the UK says the use of epibatidine, a natural neurotoxin isolated from the skin of the Ecuadorian poison dart frog was the cause of Navalny’s death. This was also attested by toxicology expert Jill Johnson to BBC who said the poison was “200 times more potent” than morphine.
Epibatidine can be found naturally in dart frogs in the wild in South America as well as being manufactured in a laboratory. Dart frogs in captivity do not produce this toxin and it is not found naturally in Russia, the European allies said in their statement.
Species known as Anthony’s poison arrow frog and the Phantasmal poison frog are among those that secrete the toxin onto their skin. ‘Dart frog toxin’ on the other hand is a general term for a group of lipophilic alkaloid chemicals found in the skin secretions of certain poison frogs of the family Dendrobatidae.
While medical investigations of epibatidine have been conducted in limited settings, its clinical use is still prohibited due to its toxicity. It works by acting on nicotinic receptors in the nervous system and by overstimulating these receptors, it has the potential to cause muscle twitching, paralysis, seizures, slow heart rate, respiratory failure and ultimately death, as explained to BBC. The new theory, while being denied by Russia, again point questions over the untimely death of one of President Putin’s biggest critics.