US ‘not disputing’ European assessment of Navalny poisoning, Rubio says

The secretary of state says Washington will not fight European partners on their findings as the UK considers new sanctions.

The United States says it is not disputing European findings that Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a rare frog toxin as the United Kingdom signals possible new sanctions against Moscow.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking during a visit to Slovakia on Sunday, called the European report “very troubling” and “very serious”.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 4Exiled Russian accused of spying on opposition, including Navalny movement
• list 2 of 4Russia’s Alexey Navalny killed by dart frog poison, European nations allege
• list 3 of 4What is the ‘dart frog’ toxin, said to be linked to Alexey Navalny’s death?
• list 4 of 4Europeans say Russia poisoned dissident Alexey Navalny with dart frog toxin

The UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden on Saturday accused the Russian state of killing Navalny two years ago in a Siberian penal colony.

In a joint statement, the five countries said laboratory analysis of samples from his body found epibatidine, a toxin associated with South American dart frogs, and argued there was no innocent explanation for its presence.

The announcement, made almost exactly two years after Navalny’s death in February 2024, increases pressure on the Kremlin and raises the prospect of further coordinated Western action.

While Washington did not join the European statement, Rubio said the decision did not signal its disagreement.

“We don’t have any reason to question it,” Rubio said, adding that the US was not seeking “a fight” with its European partners over the findings.

UK threatens further sanctions

The UK warned that it was considering imposing further sanctions on Moscow.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC that the government would “continue to look at coordinated action, including increasing sanctions on the Russian regime”.

“We believe that it is the partnerships that we build abroad that make us stronger at home. It is by acting alongside our European allies, alongside allies across the world, that we do maintain that pressure on the Russian regime,” she said.

The five European nations said epibatidine is not found naturally in Russia and Moscow had the means, motive and opportunity to administer the toxin while Navalny was imprisoned.

They said the findings underlined the need to hold Russia accountable under international conventions banning chemical and biological weapons.

Alexey Navalny speaks to the media before a court session in Moscow in April 2019 [File: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP]

Russia has denied any involvement. The Russian embassy in London dismissed the accusations as propaganda and questioned the credibility of Western experts.

Moscow has previously said Navalny died of natural causes and has not publicly detailed the circumstances.

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, died while serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” and other charges he rejected as politically motivated.

His death prompted protests and memorials across European capitals and intensified Western scrutiny of Russia’s human rights record.

Any new sanctions would add to sweeping measures imposed on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, further straining relations between Moscow and Western governments.