US Secretary of State Rubio calls the European report on Alexei Navalny’s death by dart frog toxin troubling.
Marco Rubio described a report by five European allies blaming Russia for the death of late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny as “troubling,” while clarifying that the United States has no reason to dispute the findings.
Speaking at a news conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, Rubio said, “We obviously are aware of the report. It’s a troubling report. We’re aware of that case of Mr. Navalny and certainly, we don’t have any reason to question it.”
The joint statement released Saturday by Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Netherlands concluded that analyses of Navalny’s body “conclusively” detected epibatidine, a toxin derived from South American poison dart frogs and not naturally found in Russia.
Russia, which has repeatedly denied involvement in Navalny’s death while he was imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony, dismissed the findings as “a Western propaganda hoax,” according to TASS.
When asked why the US did not formally join the statement, Rubio explained that the effort was led by the European nations, “Those countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that. We chose doesn’t mean we disagree with the outcome. It wasn’t our endeavour. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing based on the intelligence they’ve gathered.”
Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition figure, died in February 2024 after being convicted of extremism and other charges, which he consistently denied.