Epibatidine is a chlorinated alkaloid that is secreted by the Ecuadorian frog Epipedobates anthonyi and poison dart frogs from the genus Ameerega. It’s also a neurotoxin that interferes with nicotinic and muscarinic acetylcholine receptors that Putin used to eliminate opposition leader Alexei Navalny:
The foreign ministries of the U.K., France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands said analysis in European labs of samples taken from Navalny’s body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine.” The neurotoxin secreted by dart frogs in South America is not found naturally in Russia, they said.
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Navalny, who crusaded against official corruption and staged massive anti-Kremlin protests as President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence that he believed to be politically motivated.
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Russian authorities said that the politician became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.
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Navalny was the target of an earlier poisoning in 2020, with a nerve agent in an attack he blamed on the Kremlin, which always denied involvement. His family and allies fought to have him flown to Germany for treatment and recovery. Five months later, he returned to Russia, where he was immediately arrested and imprisoned for the last three years of his life.
The U.K. has accused Russia of repeatedly flouting international bans on chemical and biological weapons. It accuses the Kremlin of carrying out a 2018 attack in the English city of Salisbury that targeted a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, with the nerve agent Novichok. Skripal and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after she came across a discarded bottle with traces of the nerve agent.
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Russia also denied poisoning Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic who died in London in 2006, after ingesting the radioactive isotope polonium-210.
I have strong doubts about this claim. I think Putin had the guy killed, but also that the European foreign ministers are just making up the bit about conclusive identification of the lethal compound. What’s the explanation for use of the compound? It isn’t to demonstrate that Russia has it: the total synthesis is well within the capability of good organic chemists in most countries, and Russia has a deep bench of excellent chemists. It isn’t to say, “we can reach out and touch you with this very lethal stuff” – they did it in the most under-their-control environment possible. I’d guess the most plausible explanation if true is that they wanted to confirm whether Euro lab detection capabilities was sophisticated enough to accurately detect the substance even though they probably only needed half a milligram and the samples would have been both very dilute and degraded in the long period between poisoning and getting samples. That might have been an open question for Russian Intel, and now they know the Euros can do it. Still, that all that seems a stretch. For it to be true, the Russians would have have seen their own equipment not able to do it, and weren’t sure whether the Euro cutting edge was far enough ahead to do it. But I know that Russian equipment and capability is, if not perhaps true best-in-world cutting edge, then close enough for something like this, if it’s actually doable at all. In general my impression is that these incidents are considered opportunities to justify whatever actions they want against the Russians by characterizing them as a country making and using banned nuclear, chemical, and bio-chemical agents, which has a long track record of generating disproportionately emotional negative public sentiment and manufacturing consent for the willingness to go to war or continue a war.
And how, precisely, did Western European leaders, who are at war with Russia, obtain samples of the dead man’s blood?
Oh dear. At some point it’s not even “lazy asses are plagiarizing the Original British BS”, but rather “morons are unable to invent anything new”.
Handle says:
I suppose one could hypothesize up something. But the simple questions remain, like what’s even the point? Serious assassination? It’s a stupid method. Demonstration? It is indeed not clear WTF is even demonstrated.
Middle management dodged retirement with acute mental problems and did weird things (see Voynovich — that one almost certainly was real poisoning)? Both too coincidental and too convenient for the adversary.
What’s left?
Besides, it’s a copycat of a pre-existing scandal, so… IMO the simplest hypothesis is the most likely. The authors had to make it sensational enough to compete with the British BS. Thus needed something exotic. But unlike the British professional BS slingers, they are not diligent or smart enough to look up literature on the subject and hunt down uncommon sources like Mirzoyanov. So they picked the inspiration from Hollywood or Young Adult section: poison dart frogs!
…and if politicians want opportunities, why must they politely wait for one? Duh.