Is there little evidence that the late Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader who recently died in prison, was poisoned with Novichok in 2020? No, that's not true: Laboratory results from samples of Navalny's blood, urine and skin, performed by multiple laboratories in Germany and other countries, proved that Navalny was poisoned with a Russian nerve agent code-named Novichok. The details of his poisoning, symptoms, treatment and laboratory results were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on February 19, 2024. It's part of a longer video during which a woman named Natali Morris claimed on the podcast "Redacted" on YouTube (archivd here) that there was not enough evidence to show that Navalny was poisoned with Novichok in 2020. The video on TikTok shows part of Morris' claim with a voiceover translating into Czech. The quote below is from the original English version.
The man who died this week in a Russian prison was not otherwise a healthy man. Even before this alleged poisoning. So will we ever know if he was actually poisoned. If it was actually the Russian government, what was there, who put it there. We have so little evidence of that. Despite the fact that the western press has just run away with this. He was absolutely poisoned with this nerve agent, they say.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Feb 20 08:03:25 2024 UTC)
The test results from multiple laboratories certified in the detection of chemical agents, later confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (archived here), showed that the urine and blood samples from Navalny contained a substance from the Novichok group of nerve agents.
On September 2, 2020, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a press conference that there was "unequivocal evidence" that Navalny was poisoned with a substance from the Novichok nerve agent family. She called Navalny a "victim of an attempted murder" and said there were questions that "only the Russian government can answer." Moscow denied it was behind the poisoning and said Navalny's death could have been exacerbated by poor nutrition, stress and fatigue (archived here).
On August 20, 2020, Navalny was hospitalized in the Russian city of Omsk after falling ill and losing consciousness on a domestic flight over Siberia. Two days later, at his family's request, he was airlifted to Charite Hospital in Berlin for treatment after German doctors said tests indicated he had been poisoned.
Details of Navalny's case, including blood and other test results, were published in the medical journal The Lancet on December 22, 2020, in an article titled "Novichok nerve agent poisoning" (archived here).
Natali Morris, along with her husband Clayton Morris, both former U.S. television personalities, produce "Redacted," a podcast known to spread pro-Kremlin misinformation (archived here) and conspiracy theories. In her appearance, Natali Morris also made claims about Navalny that are beyond the scope of this fact check, saying he was a racist xenophobe with hardly any popular support in Russia, and claiming that the 3 percent political support he once had dropped after the poisoning.
The Czech voiceover for the Morris video was provided by a website called Otevri svou mysl, which is known to spread misinformation and conspiracies, according to the Czech Foundation for Independent Journalism (archived here).
