COLUMN: Navalny poisoned with epibatidine — EU sanctions judges, FSB, and doctors

Introduction: Justice through sanctions, or how Europe refuses to forget

A verdict that Russia can never erase

On June 15, 2026, the European Union added 15 individuals directly linked to the persecution, poisoning, and death of Alexei Navalny to its blacklists: judges, prosecutors, FSB agents, and medical personnel. This is not a symbolic declaration. It is a legal act with concrete consequences—asset freezes, travel bans from European territory—made possible by the joint declaration of February 14, 2026, by the governments of the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, who asserted with certainty that Navalny had been killed by a poison: epibatidine.

Two years after his death in the Polar Wolf penal colony, beyond the Arctic Circle, the Navalny file is not closed. On the contrary, it is being enriched by scientific evidence, specific designations, and increasing diplomatic pressure. The Russian machinery of impunity is meeting a resistance it perhaps did not anticipate at this speed.

What a sanctions list really means

Too often, sanctions lists are presented as political theater—a way of doing something without really doing anything. This is a short-sighted view. Freezing the assets of a judge who sentenced Navalny to 19 years in prison is to signal to him that his act has a price. Banning him from traveling to Europe is to shrink his world. And above all, it is to document, for history, who did what in the machinery of a state killing.

The Council of the EU based these new measures on Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1362 of June 15, 2026, amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1485 on restrictive measures regarding the situation in Russia. The legal basis is solid. The political intention, even more so.

Epibatidine: A frog poison sold as a state crime

From Ecuador to a cell in the Russian Great North

Epibatidine is an alkaloid first isolated from the skin of a venomous South American frog, the Epipedobates tricolor, found in the province of Bol

var, Ecuador. It is estimated to be 100 to 200 times more powerful than morphine depending on the source, and is a formidable poison: it causes convulsions, respiratory paralysis, coma, and then death. There is no known antidote. Its presence in the cell of a Russian political prisoner, above the Arctic Circle, cannot be explained by any natural occurrence.

According to the joint declaration of the five European states published on February 14, 2026—the day after the second anniversary of Navalny's death—independent national laboratories analyzed samples taken from Navalny's body and

 conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine

. These samples had been collected by those close to Navalny and exfiltrated clandestinely out of Russia—an act of scientific as much as political resistance.

The GosNIIOKhT, or the chemical continuity of crime

The most chilling dimension of this case, revealed notably by Le Monde, is the link between epibatidine and the GosNIIOKhT—the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in Moscow. Researchers from this institute had published, as early as 2013, a scientific article on epibatidine. This is no coincidence: it is the same institute that developed Novichok, used against Navalny in 2020 and against Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. An institutional continuity, a chemical expertise inherited from the Soviet era, put at the service of eliminating opponents.

The five signatory countries of the joint declaration were explicit:

 Only the Russian state had the means, motives, and opportunity to deploy this toxic agent against Alexei Navalny during his imprisonment in Russia.

 This formulation is not rhetorical. It is legally constructed to withstand challenge.

The joint declaration of the five states: An unequivocal accusation

Munich, February 14, 2026: The world holds its breath

It was on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that the Foreign Ministers of the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands went public with their joint declaration. The choice of location and timing is not incidental: Munich is where, two years earlier, Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, had learned of her husband's death live, in front of the world's cameras. The circle was closing with a troubling symbolic precision.

The declaration is terse and devastating. It states:

 Epibatidine is a toxic agent found in South American frogs. It is not found naturally in Russia. Poisoning was highly probable as the cause of death. Navalny died while held in prison, which means Russia had the means, motives, and opportunity to administer this poison to him.

 The five countries also informed the Director-General of the OPCW

the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons

of this violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

The Russian reaction: Denial as policy

Moscow rejected the five countries' findings wholesale, calling the investigation

 biased and unfounded

. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated the official position that Navalny had died of

 natural causes

. These alleged natural causes

hypertension, chronic hepatitis, spinal arthritis

had been put forward by the Russian Investigative Committee, which had refused to open a criminal investigation six months after the death. A doctor who had treated Navalny in the past called this diagnosis

 implausible

.

Yulia Navalnaya, for her part, was unambiguous from Paris, where she was attending a commemorative event:

 The assassination is now proven by science

, she declared. His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, had visited the Borisovo cemetery to mark the second anniversary of her son's death.

 But this confirms what we knew from the beginning: our son didn't just die in prison, he was murdered.



The June 15, 2026 EU listing: Who are the 15 individuals sanctioned

A wide spectrum: From the courtroom to the crisis cell

Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1362 of June 15, 2026, adds 15 individuals and one entity to the European blacklist for their involvement in "the persecution, poisoning, and death of Alexei Navalny." The profiles cover the entire chain of responsibility: judges who handed down the sentences, prosecutors who requested the penalties, FSB officers involved in surveillance and the elimination of forensic traces, and medical personnel who may have contributed to delaying or compromising care.

Among the names identified by sources is Oleg Nefedov, a judge at the Supreme Court of Russia. We also find Alexander Murakhovsky, former health minister of the Omsk region

the very one who supervised the first medical hours after the 2020 Novichok poisoning and whose management had raised serious questions. His counterpart Alexander Sabayev, chief toxicologist of the Omsk region, also appears in the listing. On the FSB side, Vasily Kalashnikov, a mass spectrometry expert at the FSB Forensic Science Institute’s Special Equipment Center, is designated as

 a central player in the FSB's collective effort to erase all forensic evidence

.

The sanctioned entity: IPJSC NTK and mass surveillance

Beyond individuals, the list includes IPJSC NTK

the holding company for NtechLab, a Russian leader in facial recognition. This entity had cooperated with the Moscow City Information Technology Department to develop a surveillance system aimed at identifying, tracking, and apprehending independent journalists, opposition activists, and participants in protests in support of Navalny and against the war in Ukraine. The listing of NTK on the European list directly links the physical repression of Navalny to the digital repression of those who supported him.

These designations are based on a new legal framework, established by Regulation (EU) 2024/1485 concerning restrictive measures in view of the situation in Russia

a regime born precisely after Navalny's death in 2024, which now allows for the targeting of actors in internal Russian repression who were not covered by previous instruments.

The chronology of a state death: From 2024 to 2026

February 16, 2024: Death announced by the guards

On February 16, 2024, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service announced that Alexei Navalny had

 suffered a malaise after a walk

, collapsed, and died despite resuscitation attempts. He was 47 years old. He was serving a 19-year sentence in the IK-6 "Polar Wolf" colony, beyond the Arctic Circle, to which he had been transferred just two months prior. This transfer, decided after a first severe sentence, had been denounced by his relatives as an attempt at fatal isolation.

The first hours were marked by the withholding of information. The body was only returned to his mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, a week later, after humiliating negotiations. An activist who had traveled to the colony described seeing Navalny's footprints in the snow

the last physical trace of a man the system had decided to make disappear. According to a report submitted by five prison guards, Navalny had exhibited severe vomiting and convulsions shortly before his death

symptoms consistent with epibatidine poisoning.

September 2025: Yulia Navalnaya breaks the silence on the samples

More than a year after her husband's death, Yulia Navalnaya revealed in a video on social media that Navalny's team had managed to

 secure and transport

 biological samples taken from the body to foreign laboratories. Two independent laboratories in two different countries concluded that he had been poisoned. She publicly urged these laboratories to make their results public

some, she said, were resisting for

 political reasons

. On March 15, 2026, the scientific timeline closed with the five states officially endorsing their findings.

The ambulance had only arrived 40 minutes after Navalny had collapsed. The prison doctor had informed his mother that he had died of

 sudden death syndrome

. Every additional detail that emerges enriches the picture of a premeditated murder, executed with care, and protected by the state apparatus.

The EU facing impunity: The architecture of sanctions since 2020

A regime built brick by brick since Novichok

The history of European sanctions against those responsible for Navalny's persecution began in October 2020, after his Novichok poisoning in Siberia. Six senior Russian officials

including those close to the presidential office and the director of the FSB

were then designated under the EU chemical weapons regime. In March 2021, four additional officials were added following his incarceration. Then in November 2022, eight new FSB officers and chemical weapons experts.

After Navalny's death in February 2024, an entirely new legal framework was established

Regulation (EU) 2024/1485

allowing for the specific targeting of internal repression actors in Russia. In March 2024, 33 individuals were sanctioned: judges, prosecutors, prison directors, several of whom had directly signed the verdicts that kept Navalny behind bars. In May 2024, 19 others, including the Federal Penitentiary Service itself as an entity, were added. The June 15, 2026 listing with 15 new individuals and the NTK entity thus represents the most recent layer of an architecture of accountability built over six years.

What the 21st sanctions package promises to bring

During her press conference on June 15, 2026, High Representative Kaja Kallas confirmed that member state ministers were already discussing the 21st sanctions package, which is expected to include restrictions affecting 90 additional banks. She recalled that Western sanctions had already cost the Russian economy between 1 and 1.3 trillion euros.

 Every measure reduces Russia's room for maneuver

, she stated.

 Brick by brick, we are crumbling the foundations of the Russian war economy.



In parallel, the European Council of June 19, 2026, decided to renew the sanctions for a duration of one year

a first, after years where they were renewed every six months under Hungarian pressure. The departure of Viktor Orb

n as Prime Minister of Hungary clearly changed the internal political equation within the EU.

Living memory: Navalny as a symbol of Russian resistance

Yulia Navalnaya: A widow transformed into a political force

Since her husband's death, Yulia Navalnaya has refused to retreat into silent mourning. She has transformed her pain into a political mandate, assuming the moral leadership of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and continuing her husband's work from exile. She has met with European leaders, testified before parliaments, and maintained a public presence that forces Western governments not to forget.

In Munich, on February 14, 2026, she was in Paris for a commemorative event when the declaration of the five countries was made public.

 I want to remind Vladimir Putin that my husband Alexei Navalny was killed by a chemical weapon

, she had declared at the conference two years ago. The scientific confirmation of epibatidine in 2026 retrospectively validates what she had always claimed: her husband did not just die, he was assassinated by the state.

The anonymous protesters and the Borisovo cemetery

On February 16, 2026, several hundred Muscovites visited the Borisovo cemetery, about twenty kilometers southeast of the Kremlin, to mark the second anniversary of Navalny's death. They risked arrest

police were present. Yet they came, with flowers, in silence or in tears. A student interviewed by Le Monde said simply:

 We are not alone.

 These people are not in the sanctions statistics. They are not in the official speeches. But they constitute the living flesh of a Russian resistance that exists, that persists, despite systematic repression.

Epibatidine, the CWC, and international law: An unprecedented crime

A violation of chemical and biological conventions

The joint declaration of the five states on February 14, 2026, explicitly qualifies the use of epibatidine as a

 flagrant violation

 of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Their permanent representatives to the OPCW wrote to the Director-General that day to officially inform him. But the five countries went further: they also pointed to a violation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), under whose scope epibatidine

a toxin of animal origin

potentially falls.

According to an analysis published by the Lieber Institute for Law and Warfare at West Point, the states chose not to trigger the formal consultation mechanism of the BTWC but informed the OPCW of a possible violation of the CWC. This pragmatic approach reflects diplomatic reality: formal mechanisms are slow, politically costly, and susceptible to blockage by Russia. Sanctions constitute a more immediate and targeted response.

Why epibatidine is a deliberate choice and not an accident

Epibatidine is not included in standard post-mortem toxicology panels. It does not appear on the CWC's lists of controlled chemicals. It is extremely difficult to detect using classic mass spectrometry methods. According to an analysis by the journal Chemical & Engineering News,

 it has no precedent as a murder weapon

. Its choice

assuming it was indeed epibatidine

reflects sophisticated analytical thinking: they sought something that would kill without leaving an easily identifiable trace. This is exactly what a state with advanced chemical research capabilities, as demonstrated by the GosNIIOKhT, would be capable of doing.

The Western diplomatic response: Firmness, but how far?

Europe coordinated, America ambiguous

At the Munich Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the European findings

 extremely concerning

 and

 very serious

, but stopped short of announcing coordinated American measures. Washington did not contest the findings

which, under a Trump administration, already represents something

but it did not join the sanctions movement either. This is a significant transatlantic divergence: Europe is moving in order, while the United States watches from the sidelines.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had announced that London was

 examining coordinated actions, including increasing sanctions

 against Moscow. The United Kingdom, despite having left the EU, remains fully aligned on this front: it was among the five signatories of the joint declaration and coordinates its sanctions regimes with Brussels in an informal but effective manner.

The Trump paradox: A necessary evil in this specific case

The Trump administration remains a source of structural uncertainty for the future of sanctions against Russia. On one hand, Trump has expressed ambiguous sympathies for Putin. On the other, his Secretary of State did not downplay the findings on Navalny. The real question is not whether Trump likes or dislikes sanctions

it is whether the American institutional architecture (Congress, Treasury, State Department) can maintain sufficient pressure, even without presidential impetus. Europe, for its part, is no longer waiting for Washington to act.

The institutional memory of the EU: Sanctions and archives of crime

The Official Journal of the EU as a register of history

What the European Union is building with these successive lists is something that goes beyond immediate politics: an institutional register of crime. Every individual sanctioned, every judge named, every FSB agent designated is recorded in the Official Journal of the EU, accessible to all, archived for eternity. Today, these men cannot open a bank account in Europe, cannot travel there, cannot do business there. Tomorrow, if Russia ever changes, these archives will serve as a basis for post-conflict justice.

This is not a far-fetched scenario. We have seen how, after the fall of other authoritarian regimes, the archives of their secret services fueled trials. The East German Stasi, the files of the Argentine dictatorship, the Khmer Rouge archives

in each case, prior documentation was decisive. Europe, by nominally listing those responsible for Navalny's death, is doing this work. It is a bet on the future.

The role of NGOs and investigative journalists

It would be unfair not to mention that the sanctions lists do not fall from the sky. They are fed by the work of organizations like Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, media outlets like Meduza or The Insider, and journalists who, often under protection, reconstruct the chains of command of Russian repression. Without them, European officials would not have the data necessary to precisely identify who signed which order, who was present in which courtroom, who refused to call the ambulance in time.

Deferred justice: Lessons from the Litvinenko case

What the history of polonium teaches us about judicial patience

In November 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer who had fled to London, died of polonium-210 poisoning. For years, Russia denied it. Evidence mounted, British investigations moved slowly. It was not until January 2016 that a British public inquiry concluded that Vladimir Putin had "probably" personally approved the operation. Ten years. Navalny's poisoning in 2020, then his death in 2024, follow the same pattern

except this time, Western states organized faster, with more solid coordination and quicker conclusions.

This acceleration is no accident. The war in Ukraine has caused a surge in institutional capacity within the EU regarding sanctions, traceability of Russian crimes, and documentation of violations. The dedicated team within the EEAS

the European External Action Service

is larger and more reactive than it has ever been.

What about formal legal proceedings?

The question that remains is that of formal criminal responsibility. Sanctions are administrative measures

they do not replace a trial. The International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the deportation of Ukrainian children. Could it one day take up the Navalny case? The legal framework is complex: the ICC requires specific individuals to be prosecuted for crimes within its jurisdiction. But the accumulated documentation

the sanctions lists, the findings of the five countries, the OPCW reports

constitutes a solid starting point for eventual criminal proceedings.

The message to Russian opponents in exile: You are not alone

A political signal sent to the Russian democratic resistance

The June 15, 2026 sanctions send a message that goes beyond the Navalny case alone. They signal to the thousands of Russians who have fled repression

journalists, lawyers, activists, artists

that Europe sees their fight, that it validates its reality by officially documenting it, and that it refuses to normalize state terror as a mere Russian cultural quirk. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Kara-Murza (released in the 2024 prisoner exchange), and Ilya Yashin

all those who survived the machine and continue their commitment from exile

can see in these lists a form of institutional solidarity.

The Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation continues to operate from exile, publishing investigations into the corruption of the Russian elite, reconstructing the financial networks of oligarchs, and documenting war crimes in Ukraine. Its funding is fragile, its team small, but its impact is real. Western governments that sanction individuals designated by the FBK's work give it an operational legitimacy that goes beyond symbolism.

The free Russian diaspora as an actor in the future transition

What is at stake in the medium term is the existence of a critical mass of trained, organized, and supported Russian opponents who will be able to play a role during the inevitable post-Putin transition. The history of successful democratizations

in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and Germany after 1945

shows that exiles often form the first government of rediscovered freedom. The EU has every interest in supporting and consolidating this democratic Russian diaspora. Sanctions against its persecutors are an indirect but real way of protecting this emerging political space.

Justice through sanctions: An imperfect but irreplaceable model

The recognized limits of a diplomatic tool

Sanctions have limits that their defenders themselves acknowledge. They do not resurrect Navalny. They do not topple Putin. They can be bypassed

through offshore structures, straw men, or complicit jurisdictions. Some sanctioned individuals have no assets in Europe and couldn't care less about a travel ban. And the macroeconomic effect on Russia, though real according to Kallas's figures, is far from sufficient to cause a short-term political collapse.

These limits are real. But they do not constitute an argument for inaction. Sanctions are part of a broader toolbox

military aid to Ukraine, financial support for free Russian civil society, multilateral diplomatic pressure, documentation of war crimes

of which no single component is sufficient on its own, but whose addition produces a cumulative pressure that Moscow can no longer ignore.

What Europe is really defending by sanctioning

By sanctioning those responsible for Navalny's death, Europe is defending something that goes beyond itself: the idea that states cannot poison their political opponents with impunity. If this norm collapses

if the elimination of dissidents through state chemistry becomes tacitly accepted by the international community

then something essential in the post-1945 world order is lost. Europe, through these lists, says no to this drift. It is an imperfect, incomplete no, but it is a no.

Conclusion: Navalny alive in the registers of history

Memory as a political act

Alexei Navalny died on February 16, 2024, in a penal colony beyond the Arctic Circle. Official Russia says he died of natural causes. Five European states, after analyzing biological samples smuggled out at the risk of the freedom of those involved, say he was poisoned with epibatidine. The EU, on June 15, 2026, named 15 of the actors in this death

real men and women, with names, functions, and documented responsibilities

and applied legally binding sanctions to them. This process is not perfect. But it is real, and it is necessary.

International justice is always imperfect, always slow, always insufficient in the face of the magnitude of the crimes it attempts to document. But its absence would be infinitely worse. What Europe is building around Navalny's death

a corpus of evidence, a list of those responsible, a lasting diplomatic pressure

is the beginning of a moral accounting that authoritarian regimes dread precisely because they know it outlives them.

What Navalny taught us about freedom

There is a phrase of Navalny's, often quoted, that perhaps summarizes better than anything else what he represented:

 The future of Russia will be beautiful. I know it, because I have seen the heart of this country

its people.

 This confidence in the Russian people, maintained until the end, against all apparent logic, is perhaps his most lasting contribution to the democratic cause. He did not hate Russia. He loved it enough to die for it. Those who wanted to erase him produced, unintentionally, an imperishable symbol.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Sources

Primary Sources

EEAS

 New EU sanctions against Russia including 15 individuals linked to Navalny's death

 June 18, 2026

Swedish Government

 Joint UK/Sweden/France/Germany/Netherlands statement on Navalny's poisoning with epibatidine

 February 14, 2026

Bird & Bird (twobirds.com)

 Legal analysis of the EU "mini" sanctions package including the Navalny listing

 June 15, 2026

Secondary Sources

Meduza

 EU sanctions "Putin’s confessor" and the Russian Prosecutor General, including individuals linked to Navalny

 June 15, 2026

Reuters (via Internazionale)

 EU adds shadow fleet figures, judges, and a bishop to sanctions list

 June 15, 2026

GTAI (Germany Trade & Invest)

 New EU sanctions package against Russia: 34 individuals and 47 entities

 June 19, 2026

Ukrainska Pravda

 EU approves parallel package of anti-Russian sanctions including 15 individuals linked to Navalny

 June 15, 2026

Le Monde

 At the Borisovo cemetery, two years after Navalny's death in a Russian prison

 February 17, 2026