Russia demands evidence of Navalny and Skripals poisonings

Moscow says Western countries must release lab test results if they have them

Russia has demanded that the West provide evidence regarding the alleged poisonings of Russian anti-corruption campaigner Aleksey Navalny and former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Moscow maintains that accusations of its involvement in the incidents are unfounded.

“We are AGAIN demanding that the Western laboratories provide the test results,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Sunday. She emphasized that conclusions must be “grounded in facts, not in imaginary slogans or random memes.”

Navalny unexpectedly died in a Russian prison in February 2024 while serving a lengthy sentence on extremism charges. His family and allies allege that the Russian government had previously attempted to kill him in 2020 using a Novichok nerve agent, a claim supported by Western governments. Moscow, however, says it has not received the relevant test results from the Charité clinic in Berlin, where Navalny was treated after falling ill during a flight in Russia.

Read more

Last week, Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said that laboratories in two unnamed countries outside Russia independently examined her husband’s biological samples and “concluded he was murdered, specifically poisoned.”

She implied that the results are being withheld from her due to unspecified “political considerations” and because influential people “did not want the uncomfortable truth to emerge at an inopportune time.”

“I demand that the laboratories that conducted the tests publish their results,” Navalnaya said.

A former Russian intelligence officer, Skripal was released to the UK in a 2010 prisoner swap and fell ill along with his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. The UK accused Russia of attempting to assassinate them using Novichok, while Moscow denied any involvement. Skripal has not been seen in public since the incident.