The story
On August 20, 2020, Alexei Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner, fell violently ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where doctors put him in a coma and said they found no poison. After two days of pressure he was flown to Berlin's Charite hospital. A German military laboratory found a Novichok nerve agent, and laboratories in France and Sweden and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed it. In December, Bellingcat, The Insider and CNN identified a team of FSB officers who had tailed him for years, and Navalny recorded a phone call in which one of them, posing as a superior, described details of the operation.
Navalny returned to Russia in January 2021 and was arrested at the airport. He was sentenced to a series of prison terms on charges his supporters called political, and on February 16, 2024, Russian authorities announced he had died in a penal colony in the Arctic village of Kharp. In February 2026 Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said tests showed he had been poisoned with epibatidine, a rare toxin found in poison dart frogs. Russia denies any role in his poisoning or death.
Why it mattered
- The poisoning led to EU and British sanctions on Russian officials and deepened the break between Russia and Europe.
- Investigative journalists' use of leaked phone and travel data to identify the FSB team set a model for later investigations.
- Navalny's return, imprisonment and death made him a symbol of opposition to Putin inside and outside Russia.
Sources
- Statement by the Federal Government on the Navalny case German Federal Government
- Joint statement by the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands on Alexei Navalny's death GOV.UK
- Navalny tricks FSB officer into revealing details about his own assassination attempt Euronews
- Navalny was poisoned with frog toxin, European governments say The Boston Globe
- Global watchdog confirms Novichok in Navalny samples The Business Standard
Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
Contested history
Consensus: Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in August 2020, as confirmed by several laboratories and the OPCW, and journalists identified an FSB team that had followed him. He died in a Russian prison in February 2024; in 2026 five European governments said he was poisoned with epibatidine. Russia denies involvement.
- Statement by the Federal Government on the Navalny case German Federal Government
- Global watchdog confirms Novichok in Navalny samples The Business Standard
- Navalny tricks FSB officer Euronews
- Navalny says Russian official confessed to plot to poison him The Boston Globe
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