Navalny may have been killed by poisoning, documents suggest: Report

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny showed signs of poisoning before his death in prison earlier this year, Russian news portal The Insider reported on Monday, citing unpublished official documents leaked to the independent investigative outlet.

Navalny, long seen as the main political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in an Arctic prison in February, with natural causes cited for his sudden death. But the Russian authorities have been unconvincing in giving their version of how Navalny died while in prison. His supporters have accused the Kremlin of killing him, even as the Russian authorities have provided selective accounts of his death.

The Russian Investigative Committee that looked into the cause of Navalny’s death ultimately concluded that it was “not criminal in nature” and was due to “combined illnesses.” 

But the documents obtained by The Insider suggest that references to Navalny’s symptoms were removed, the outlet said.

An earlier version of the documents, signed by Russian investigator Alexander Varapaev, recorded that Navalny had suffered symptoms that medical experts said were consistent with poisoning, according to the report. 

“Convict A.A. Navalny lay down on the floor and began to complain of sharp pain in the abdominal area; he started reflexive ejection of his stomach contents, had convulsions, and lost consciousness, which was immediately reported to the medical staff of the correctional facility,” reads a document on the case that accompanied the investigative committee’s decision. 

In a later final version of the document, however, all references to abdominal pain, vomiting and convulsions were removed, according to The Insider.

“It confirms that they [the Russian authorities] themselves consider that there was something there that they didn’t want to show,” Roman Dobrokhotov, chief editor of The Insider told the Russian-language “Breakfast Show” broadcast on Monday. “If those had been normal symptoms, then why wouldn’t they have left them in?”

The Russian outlet also obtained an inventory of “seized objects” taken from the scene of Navalny’s death, including “samples of vomit,” which an early version of the document says were submitted for examination — although in the final version of the document no vomiting was officially reported, according to Insider.

It would not have been the first poison attack against Russia’s most prominent opposition figure. Navalny fell into a coma in August 2020 after being poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent in what his supporters said was a state-sponsored attempt to kill him.

Navalny survived and, after treatment in Germany, returned to Russia in 2021, where he was immediately arrested and remained behind bars until his death.

Eva Hartog contributed to this report.