Marco Rubio says, US ‘not disputing’ European report blaming Russia for Navalny poisoning

The US secretary of state Marco Rubio on Sunday said Washington is “not disputing” a report by five European countries that concluded jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was fatally poisoned, even though the US did not join the findings.

Speaking at a news conference in Bratislava during a visit, 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. We're not disputing. We're going to do a fight with these countries over it. But it was their report, and they put that out there,” reported Reuters.


Earlier, Rubio had said Washington’s decision not to formally associate itself with the report “doesn't mean we disagree” with the conclusion that Navalny was poisoned with a “rare toxin” derived from a dart frog and that the Russian state was the prime suspect.

In a joint statement on Saturday, the foreign ministries of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said laboratory analysis of samples taken from Navalny detected epibatidine — a potent toxin found in the skin of South American poison dart frogs and not naturally occurring in Russia, AP reported.

The countries said Russia had the “means, motive and opportunity” to administer the poison and announced plans to report Moscow to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for an alleged breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said Russia viewed Navalny as a threat, adding that the use of such a poison showed “the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the fear it has of political opposition.”

Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024 while serving a 19-year sentence he said was politically motivated. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said her husband’s murder was now a “science-proven fact.”

Russian authorities have maintained that Navalny fell ill after a walk and died of natural causes. He had previously survived a 2020 poisoning with a nerve agent that he blamed on the Kremlin.

(With inputs from Reuters, agencies)