March 9, 2026

FBK publishes official autopsy report of Navalny. The foundation believes the result was 'tailored'

Maria Pevchikh, chairwoman of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) and head of its investigations department, has published fragments of the official forensic medical examination of Alexei Navalny's body. The examination was conducted at the Russian Center for Forensic Medical Expertise (FGБУ "RTSME") of the Russian Ministry of Health in the summer of 2024. The conclusion is 289 pages long. It contains a partial list of the expert commission (their names are hidden) and the questions posed to them. The document also describes the analyses and their results. 'In the opinion of the experts we spoke with, this list is unusually broad and uncharacteristic of what the Kremlin calls 'death from natural causes.' They were looking for, among other things, poisons. For example, toxins from poisonous plants and fungi,' Pevchikh said. The study's conclusion states that Navalny died as a result of a 'combined illness': he had hypertensive disease with vascular and organ damage, diffuse myocardial sclerosis, complicated by cerebral edema, ventricular fibrillation, and pulmonary edema. Atropine, an antidote for certain poisonings, was also found in the politician's body. 'The forensic medical examination shows clear signs of 'tailoring' the research to achieve the desired result - a conclusion that Navalny allegedly died of natural causes,' Pevchikh wrote. According to her, the FBK has had access to these documents for a year and a half but decided to release them now because 'a number of media outlets' want to publish the research. She believes that publishing 'photographs and a detailed description of what each internal organ of the murdered politician looks like' has no public significance and contradicts ethical standards. Previously, NATO laboratories determined that the politician was killed with epibatidine, a highly toxic poison extracted from the skin of a South American frog. This is not mentioned at all in the official Russian expertise.