Putin opponents exiled in Europe claim they were poisoned

At least three Russian journalists and human rights activists who fled the country in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine say they were poisoned while traveling through Europe in the last year.

The Insider, an independent Russian investigative news outlet, released a report on Tuesday publishing details of the alleged poisonings which began in the fall of 2022.

Multiple Russian opposition figures and Kremlin critics have been poisoned during Putin’s rule, including former Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko, British-naturalized Russian defector and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal.

In May, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, who has been critical of the Kremlin, told Newsweek he experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning months before Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In October Elena Kostyuchenko, a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and Meduza, said she was poisoned in Munich, Germany. A week later, Ekho Moskvy journalist Irina Babloyan said she had almost identical symptoms in Tbilisi, Georgia. And this spring, the head of the Free Russia Foundation, Natalia Arno, said she was poisoned with a neurotoxic substance, the Insider reported.

Newsweek has contacted Russia’s Foreign Ministry via email for comment.

Elena Kostyuchenko

Kostyuchenko, who previously reported on Putin’s initial 2014 invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine, travelled to Ukraine as Novaya Gazeta’s special correspondent at the start of the February 2022 full-scale invasion. In March 2022, she wrote four stories before colleagues and Ukrainian intelligence sources warned her that an attempt could be made on her life. She then left Ukraine and went to Europe.

She began working for Meduza in September 2022 after finding an apartment in Berlin, and fell unwell after eating a meal with a friend at a restaurant in Munich on October 18, 2022. The next morning, she suffered symptoms including constant nausea, vomiting, severe pain in her stomach which extended to her spine, insomnia, extreme dizziness and anxiety, and later on, swelling in her face and fingers, and hand-foot syndrome.

Doctors concluded that Kostyuchenko may have been poisoned after conducting tests and ruling out various conditions. The Insider spoke with several doctors and and experts on poisonous substances who agreed that her symptoms pointed to exogenous poisoning.

Irina Babloyan

The Ekho Moskvy journalist left Moscow and went to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in October 2022, where she stayed at a hotel for a few days before feeling unwell on October 25. Babloyan’s symptoms included severe dizziness, feeling weak, and hand-foot syndrome. The next day, she felt extreme fatigue, and later experienced nausea, insomnia, stomach pain, and a metallic taste in her mouth.

Several months later, she submitted a blood sample for a toxicology test at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, but doctors said they lost it. Several experts who spoke to the Insider said exogenous poisoning is the only explanation for Babloyan’s symptoms.

Natalia Arno

Arno, a Kremlin critic and the head of the U.S.-based nonprofit Free Russia Foundation, attended a private event in Prague on May 2, 2023. When she returned to her hotel room that night, she noticed her door was open and recalled smelling a “distinct smell of some kind of perfume, which had not been there before,” the Insider reported.

She was awoken at 5 a.m. the next morning in extreme pain which affected her tongue and teeth and couldn’t be relieved by taking painkillers. This pain spread as the hours passed, reaching her ears, chest, armpits and eventually, her spine. Arno said there was a mineral taste in her mouth, and eventually, her eyes blurred and her arms and legs became numb.

Later that day, Arno flew to Washington, D.C., where she now lives, where she sought medical attention. Doctors told her she was poisoned by a neurotoxic substance, and U.S. law enforcement authorities continue to investigate her case, according to The Insider.

Arno has said she believes she may have been poisoned, “possibly by some nerve agent” during her trip to Europe in early May.

“I still have neuropathy symptoms but overall I feel much better,” Arno wrote on Facebook on May 16.

The independent news outlet Agentstvo first reported on Arno’s poisoning in May 2023. Agentstvo has suggested unknown persons associated with Russian intelligence could have been behind such incidents.

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