The US position on the accusations related to the poisoning of Navalny: “It is a disturbing report”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as “disturbing” the report by five European countries accusing Russia of assassinating Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny using a toxin extracted from a poisonous species of frog, reports Reuters.

“It is a disturbing report. We are aware of Mr. Navalny's case and we certainly have no reason to doubt him,” said Marco Rubio, in a press conference held in Bratislava.

Asked why the United States is not among the countries that signed the report, Rubio stated that it was an initiative initiated by France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden.

“These countries have reached this conclusion. They are coordinating the approach. That does not mean that we do not agree with the conclusions, only that it was not our approach. Sometimes countries do their work based on the information that they have obtained. We do not dispute or enter into a dispute with these countries on this topic. But it was their report,” the official from Washington said.

Accusations by five European countries

Russian dissident Aleksei Navalnyi, who died in February 2024 under unclear circumstances in a Siberian prison, was “poisoned” with a “rare toxin” – epibatidine – by Moscow, according to an investigation carried out by five European countries, including Great Britain, and whose conclusions were revealed on Saturday by London, reports AFP.

“We know that the Russian state used this lethal toxin to target Navalny, out of fear of his opposition,” the British Foreign Office says in a statement issued alongside Sweden, France, the Netherlands and Germany, in the context of the approaching date that marks two years since the death of the fervent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Aleksei Navalnyi died on February 16, 2024, at the age of 47, in a Russian prison in the Arctic Circle, missing the opposition of the most charismatic and popular leader.

“Great Britain, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands are convinced that Aleksei Navalnyi was poisoned with a lethal toxin”, accuse the five countries in this joint statement, which was sent on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference.

London also announces that it will refer the case of this poisoning to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), “as a flagrant violation by Russia” of its convention and appealed to Moscow “to immediately stop this dangerous activity”.

The Foreign Office explains that “collaborative and constant work has confirmed, through laboratory analysis, that the deadly toxin present in the skin of a species of frog from Ecuador (epibatidine) was found in samples taken from the corpse of Aleksei Navalny”.

The five countries point out that this toxin “very likely caused his death”.