The mother of Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in prison on February 16, 2024, said European laboratory findings that he was killed with a toxin derived from South American poison dart frogs confirmed "what we knew from the beginning.... He was murdered."
Lyudmila Navalnaya spoke at a memorial service held in honor of her son at the Borisovskoye cemetery in Moscow, where dozens of people gathered to mark the second anniversary of Navalny's death.
Video shared by the SOTA Telegram channel showed people laying flowers at his grave. Representatives from several European diplomatic missions -- including Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, Latvia, and others -- were also seen arriving at the cemetery.
A longtime anti-corruption fighter and Russia's most prominent opposition politician for over a decade, Navalny died in a harsh prison known as Polar Wolf in Russia's Yamalo-Nenets district settlement of Kharp, north of the Arctic Circle, while serving a 19-year sentence.
"We can't afford to become apathetic and believe that our country has no future," former Navalny associate Ksenia Fadeyeva told RFE/RL's Russian Service in an interview marking the anniversary of his death.
"If we do believe that it's all over and that evil has prevailed, it really will prevail," added Fadeyeva, who learned of Navalny's death while she herself was in detention in Russia. She was later released in a prisoner exchange in 2024, in which Navalny was initially also supposed to be included.
The Russian authorities have maintained Navalny died of natural causes. But European laboratories found the toxin epibatidine in his samples, confirming suspicions that he was poisoned.
The governments of five European countries on February 14 released a statement saying they are confident Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin not found naturally in Russia.
"This confirms what we knew from the very beginning. We knew that our son did not simply die in prison: He was murdered," Lyudmila Navalnaya said in reaction to the statement.
"I think it will take some time, but we will find out who did it," she told reporters outside the cemetery, adding, "We want justice to prevail."
The Kremlin dismissed the European statement.
"We naturally do not accept such accusations; we disagree with them. We consider them biased and unfounded," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on February 16. "We categorically reject them."
In response to the statement, Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said "Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be punished for all his crimes."
Yulia Navalnaya stated in September last year that laboratories in two unspecified European countries found evidence that her husband had been poisoned.
"We have achieved truth, and we will also achieve justice one day," she posted on X on February 16.
French President Emmanuel Macron marked the anniversary with a message describing Navalny's death as "premeditated."
He stated that it revealed "everything about the Kremlin's weakness and its fear of any opponent," adding that "truth always prevails."
According to Navalny's team, which works in exile, events are planned in Russia and over 20 other countries to commemorate the death of deceased Russian opposition leader.
With reporting from RFE/RL's Russian Service, AFP, and DPA
