The Kremlin on Monday rejected accusations from five European countries that the Russian state killed the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny two years ago using a toxin from poison dart frogs.
According to the Kremlin, the claims are “based on nothing.”
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, died in February 2024 at the age of 47 in a remote Arctic prison.
His death came a month before Putin achieved a landslide victory in elections that Western countries described as neither free nor fair.
In a joint statement on Saturday, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said that analyses of samples from Navalny’s body “conclusively” confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America and not naturally occurring in Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that Moscow views the European accusations, which he called false, with great negativity.
“Of course, we do not accept such accusations. We do not agree with them. We consider them one-sided and unfounded. And, in fact, we firmly reject them,” Peskov said.
Russian authorities, who have declared Navalny’s movement extremist, have previously dismissed allegations by his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, that the state had murdered him, saying he died of natural causes.