Five European nations on Saturday claimed that Moscow had killed former Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, with a toxin said to be "one of the deadliest on Earth".
“The UK, Sweden, France, Germany and the Netherlands are confident that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin,” the British foreign ministry said in a joint statement, citing “analyses of samples" from the 47-year-old dissident, who died in prison in February 2024.
The five nations added it was "highly likely" that Navalny died as a result of epibatidine, which contains the deadly toxin, but have not yet clarified how it was administered to Navalny.
On the day of his death in prison, Navalny had allegedly felt unwell after taking a walk around the high-security facility located in a remote Siberian penal colony, after which he died, Russian authorities had said, back in 2024.
How deadly is this toxin?
According to National Geographic, poison dart frogs raised in the wild measure only about two inches long, but carry enough poison to kill up to 10 grown men.
The fact that the frogs are indigenous to South American nations, and not Russia, has also been used by the five nations as probable cause in the Navalny murder.
The toxin in epibatidine, which can be extracted from the skin of these frogs, is said to be a neurotoxin, or one that targets the nervous system, and is a known chemical weapon, as per a Sky News report.
Said to be one of the deadliest on Earth, the 'dart frog' toxin is also 200 times stronger than morphine, and is capable of causing paralysis, breathing difficulties, and a painful death.
The report added that Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has already been accused of an attempt on Navalny back in 2020 using a Novichok nerve agent, another chemical weapon.
The five nations now plan to submit their findings to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an international chemical weapons watchdog, in order to ramp up the pressure on Putin.