{"id":4113,"date":"2026-03-09T02:15:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T20:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/?p=4113"},"modified":"2026-03-09T02:15:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T20:45:56","slug":"nothing-to-do-with-us-russia-rejects-frog-poison-claim-in-navalny-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/nothing-to-do-with-us-russia-rejects-frog-poison-claim-in-navalny-death\/4113\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nothing to do with us\u2019 Russia rejects \u2018Frog Poison\u2019 claim in Navalny death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Claimed with the murder of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny<\/a>, refuting information that there was a rare toxin based on a dart frog in South America. In an interview with the television programme Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips<\/a> the ambassador ruled out the claims and added that the death of Navalny had nothing to do with us.<\/p>\n

Navalny was 47 when he died and was serving his sentence in a distant penitentiary in Siberia. His incarceration and subsequent death turned out to be the subject of a lot of foreign and political concern. The representatives of some European governments publicly leveled accusations at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year on the cause of the death of Navalny. The officials of the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden and Netherlands asserted that Navalny had been poisoned with a very toxic chemical substance called epibatidine<\/a> says claims.<\/p>\n

Epibatidine is an effective neurotoxin that was first discovered on the skin of some Ecuadorian dart frogs. These are South American frogs which produce toxins on their skin that can have an influence on the nervous system. Due to its strength, epibatidine has been put in the same category when it comes to the debate on chemical weapons. The governments accusing them of using such a toxin termed the alleged action of using a toxin as a barbarous act and implied that the operation would have been done only through the involvement or consent of the Russian government. Specifically, the blame was directed at the government headed by the Russian president Vladimir Putin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reacting on such claims in the interview, Ambassador posed the possibility of the accusation that the toxin was of South American frog origin. He disputed the idea of Russia getting such a substance in South America and commented on the fact that the country would somehow import the frog which produces the toxin in the form of a rhetorical suggestion. Besides rejecting the accusation, Kelin<\/a> filed a counter-claim on the ground that a synthetic form of the toxin was being sold purportedly in London. To him, such a synthetic compound can be purchased in the British capital in six locations implying that the compound is not specific to Russia and thus cannot serve as a reliable evidence of Russian participation.<\/p>\n

Yvette Cooper<\/a>, who also featured in the same show, disputed the comments. Cooper did not accept the argument by the ambassador and insisted that the accusations against Russia had evidence. She explained that Russia could and had the motive to execute such an act. Cooper argues that the governments that made the allegation had seen information that they feel distinctly gives evidence on the responsibility of Russians.<\/p>\n

Cooper also added that the allegation had not been raised by an isolated government. Rather, several European nations had jointly blamed Moscow as causing the death of Navalny. Their words that occurred during the Munich Security Conference placed the alleged use of the toxin within the scope of the gravest violation as the substance is classified as a chemical weapon. Cooper proposed that the claim was founded on common conclusions, and not a political declaration made by a particular government by pointing at the collective stance of several governments.<\/p>\n

The question of how the toxin was allegedly administered is still in doubt although the accusations and denials were made. Navalny was killed in prison in the Siberian penal colony, and it is not publicly explained how the substance could have been delivered. According to the reports, the toxin could not have been introduced to the world by a frog itself, as it is the belief of investigators. Rather it is known that the supposed substance that was thought to have been involved probably was made in a laboratory.<\/p>\n

This is an important difference in that epibatidine can occur in the form of both natural and synthetic. The natural compound is obtained by the use of frog skin and the synthetic version can be synthesized into the natural one using the help of chemical treatments in controlled temperatures. The fact that the toxin could have been produced, as opposed to being derived out of an animal highlights the nature of the claims versus counter claims on the issue.<\/p>\n

With the conflict still going on, the speeches by both the Ambassador Kelin and Foreign Secretary Cooper, manifest a very stark contrast between the views of Russia and various Western political leaders regarding the meaning of the death of Navalny. Russia denies its involvement and the authorities of various European nations demonstrate that the evidence available implicates the highest members of the Russian state. The conflict reveals the political tension existing around the case and the larger global issue on ownership of the death of one of the most influential opposition leaders of Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Claimed with the murder of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, refuting information that there was a rare toxin based\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":4116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[1949,1874,1951,1952,1950],"class_list":["post-4113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-alexei-navalny","tag-andrei-kelin","tag-epibatidine","tag-kelin","tag-trevor-phillips"],"reading_time":"4 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4118,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/trade-policy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}