Navalny poisoning confirmed: the fallout?
Laboratory tests in Germany, Sweden, France, the Netherlands and the UK have revealed that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was killed in prison two years ago with the poison epibatidine. Commentators are unsurprised by the finding and focus instead on the consequences.
Toxin can be a boomerang
The most recent revelations about Navalny's death are further proof that Putin can't be trusted, says The Independent:
“Putin has poisoned his own legacy, not least by launching a bloody and indecisive war on Ukraine, but also by seemingly trying to smother the memory of his best-recognised opponent through their death. ... And most in the West can never accept him as a partner again. In the short term, the main international consequence of the Navalny revelation will be to make it impossible for the US's European allies to swallow any Trump peace plan for Ukraine that rewards Putin. Poison, it turns out, can be a boomerang.”
A fiasco for Putin
In a Telegram post picked up by Echo, Maria Pevchikh, journalist and chairwoman of the board of directors of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, sees the revelation as a major blow for Putin:
“Scientists have now discovered traces of the poison, making it possible for us to never again have to hear disgusting phrases such as 'he died under unexplained circumstances'. ... Since this murder took place in prison, where there are no accidental witnesses, where no one must be searched for, where a person only eats and drinks what they are given, it could have remained in the category of 'mysterious deaths' forever. That was Putin's plan. And that plan failed yesterday.”
No one ever doubted it
Economist Konstantin Sonin accuses the Kremlin leadership of cowardice and malice on Facebook:
“In truth there was never any real doubt. Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition, was murdered in prison on Putin's orders. Five countries have published the official reports from their laboratories: epibatidine, a nerve agent produced by a rare Ecuadorian frog and synthesised 12 years ago in the FSB's Moscow laboratory, was found in Alexei's blood. Over the course of Russia's history there may have been worse regimes than Putin's, but none as cowardly and despicable.”