Russia 'used frog toxin' to kill Alexei Navalny
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 February 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
European countries say tests show Russia's Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a substance developed from a toxin found in Ecuadorian dart frogs. But the Kremlin denies killing the opposition leader. Also: Marco Rubio delivers a softer line to America's European allies at the Munich Security Conference; there are more global protests against the Iranian government; families of Venezuelan political prisoners go on hunger strike; the "Trump slump" affects US tourism; Cuba's cigar festival is snuffed out; palaeontologists discover giant sloth and elephant-like mastodon fossils; and we visit the British inmates learning how to garden.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm Paul Moss, and in the early hours of Sunday the 15th of February, these are our main stories. |
| 0:18.1 | Russia has been accused of murdering the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, using a |
| 0:23.0 | rare toxin originally found in a South American frog. We hear about US attempts at the Munich |
| 0:29.0 | Security Conference to heal wounds in the transatlantic relationship, and wire visitor numbers |
| 0:35.4 | to the United States significantly lower. |
| 0:40.4 | Also in this podcast, demands for all of Venezuela's political prisoners to be released. |
| 0:46.2 | The political prisoners are innocent. They have no crime. The crime is to be opposition. |
| 0:51.8 | So they don't really need amnesty for this. |
| 0:54.3 | They just need to be released. |
| 0:56.2 | And newly discovered remains of massive ancient mammals, |
| 0:59.9 | which once roamed what is now Costa Rica. |
| 1:07.0 | It was hardly a great shock. |
| 1:09.8 | Tests have shown that Russia's most famous opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned. |
| 1:15.5 | Mr Navalny died in prison two years ago, with the Moscow authorities insisting natural causes were responsible. |
| 1:21.8 | But five European countries have now jointly stated that his body had traces of epibatidine. That's a deadly |
| 1:29.2 | toxin which can be made in a laboratory, though it occurs naturally in an Ecuadorian species of |
| 1:34.9 | frog. The British Foreign Office said the poison was highly likely to be what killed him, |
| 1:40.2 | and that only Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to deploy it. |
| 1:45.0 | Sergei Guriev was a friend of Alexei Navalny and a fellow critic of President Putin. |
| 1:50.6 | The news is not unexpected. |
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