By Jeffrey Rodack From Newsmax

Screenshot Newsmax TV

Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, accused Russian authorities of hiding his corpse and of waiting for traces of the Novichok nerve agent to disappear from his body as she points to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement.

“Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” Navalnaya said, adding that she would work with the Russian people to battle with the Kremlin to create a new Russia, Reuters reported.

The New York Post, in a Monday report, looked for evidence to suggest Navalny was poisoned while in an Arctic penal colony.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced Navalny lost consciousness and died while an ambulance crew worked to revive him.

But a report from independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which attributed information from an unidentified prisoner, said the ambulance arrived after Navalny was declared dead, the Post said.

Novaya Gazeta also reported that his death “became known in the prison at roughly 8 a.m. Moscow time — hours before it was made public.”

The Post said the apparent time gap sparks questions about the prison services statement, which said medics carried out “all necessary” resuscitation measures on Navalny, who, according to the time estimate, would have already been dead for hours.

Russian defector Dr. Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist, was the first to reveal Novichok in the 1990s. He maintained that a large dose of the nerve agent could also cause severe convulsions resulting in death.

Bruises were seen on Navalny’s head and chest when his body arrived at an Arctic morgue, suggesting he had experienced convulsions, a paramedic told Novaya Gazeta.

Some versions of Novichok are liquid, while others take the form of a fine powder, the Post said. Novichok could be inhaled, ingested, or rubbed into the skin.

A victim of Novichok poisoning could begin feeling its effects within 30 seconds to a couple of minutes.

In August 2020, Navalny was hospitalized after being poisoned with Novichok, a bioweapon developed in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 2022, the Chemical Weapons Convention added Novichok nerve agents to its list of banned chemical weapons.

A source told the state-controlled news outlet RT that Navalny died from a blood clot, but did not provide any evidence, the Post noted.

Anna Karetnikova, a former Russian prison official, said that from her experience, “blood clot” was commonly used as an excuse to explain away suspicious inmate deaths.

Navalny’s wife accused government officials of deliberately preventing the family from taking possession of his body to allow traces of Novichok to vanish from his system.

Kand Ivan Zhdanov, Navalny’s close ally, said he was told by an investigator on Monday that tests on the dead opposition leader’s body will take 14 days to complete.

Jeffrey Rodack ✉

Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.

Related Stories:

• The Kremlin Rejects Navalny Widow’s Charges he Was Killed by Putin as ‘insolent’
• Putin, Russia Ignore, Dismiss Claims of Poisoning Navalny

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