New documents raise fresh questions about Navalny’s death

The Black Mirror Telegram channel has published a 300-page report from the forensic examination of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s body following his death in prison. The document contains photographs, analyses of biological samples and chromatograms.

The official report by Russian experts cites combined disease – hypertension, vascular and heart damage – as the cause of death, leading to cerebral and pulmonary oedema and ventricular fibrillation. However, resuscitation doctor Alexander Polupan, who treated Navalny after his poisoning in 2020, says the published materials rather support the poisoning hypothesis.

He points in particular to multiple haemorrhages in the pancreas and duodenum which, according to him, are not consistent with a diagnosis of sudden cardiac death. Such changes, he says, can occur with toxic damage to the body. According to him, similar effects could be caused by the substance epibatidine, which, according to several sources, was also detected by some independent laboratories.

It is a natural neurotoxin isolated from the skin of a poisonous frog native to Ecuador. However, the Kremlin rejects the claims.

Navalny died on 16 February 2024.

(mja)