A turning point Five years ago, the Russian FSB poisoned Alexey Navalny. Here’s what’s become of his doctors, allies, and would-be killers since.
Five years ago, on August 20, 2020, Alexey Navalny suddenly fell ill on a flight over Siberia. In the days that followed, he was hospitalized in Omsk, put into a medically-induced coma, and evacuated to Germany, where he underwent treatment for days before spending months in rehabilitation. Lab results soon confirmed that the opposition leader had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, which Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives had applied to his underwear — a detail Navalny uncovered himself by calling one of the suspected poisoners while pretending to be an FSB official. For a while, it seemed like the story had ended on a positive note: Navalny not only survived and recovered but also exposed and mocked the individuals who tried to kill him. Meduza looks back at what became of the key figures in the poisoning saga.
Alexey Navalny
On August 20, 2020, Russia’s foremost opposition politician lost consciousness on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized and put into a medically induced coma. Two days later, his family and allies, after overcoming resistance from his doctors in Omsk, managed to get him evacuated to Germany. There, lab tests confirmed that the opposition leader had been poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. After six months of treatment and rehab, Navalny returned to Russia. He was arrested at the airport and never released. Altogether, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison on fabricated charges. He served his sentence in torturous conditions. On February 16, 2024, news broke that Navalny had died in a penal colony in Russia’s far-northern Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Tens of thousands of people came to pay their respects at his burial. The authorities said his death was natural, but their explanation appears highly suspicious. Navalny’s allies say he was murdered on Putin’s orders.
Yulia Navalnaya
Alexey Navalny’s wife
Yulia Navalnaya flew to Omsk on August 20, the day of her husband’s poisoning. At first, she was prevented from seeing her husband. Yulia demanded to take him to Germany for treatment, but the Omsk doctors refused to let him be moved. She then appealed directly to Putin. On August 22, Alexey was allowed to leave the country. When he returned six months later, Yulia flew back with him. After her husband’s arrest, she attended rallies in his support as well as his court hearings. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Yulia fled the country. On the day Alexey died, Yulia spoke at the Munich Security Conference, calling on the world to unite against Putin. She couldn’t attend her husband’s funeral in Moscow for safety reasons, but she’s vowed to carry on his work.
Kira Yarmysh
Navalny’s press secretary in 2020
Yarmysh was on Navalny’s flight from Tomsk to Moscow and witnessed firsthand how he fell ill. From the very beginning, she suggested it could be poisoning. In January 2021, she accompanied Navalny and his wife when they returned to Russia. A few days later, she was arrested and placed under house arrest in the so-called “Sanitary Case.” In August 2021, after being sentenced to a year and a half of probation, Yarmysh fled Russia. She went on to host the Navalny team’s YouTube channel, Popular Politics, and wrote two novels (in 2020 and 2022). She is now Yulia Navalnaya’s press secretary.
AlexanderMurakhovsky
Chief physician at Omsk Emergency Hospital at the time of Navalny’s poisoning
Navalny spent two days in the hospital headed by Murakhovsky. The doctor and his deputy insisted that no toxins had been found in the politician’s body and refused to allow his evacuation to Germany, citing his unstable condition. According to Yulia Navalnaya, Murakhovsky initially agreed to let her take her husband, then started “just running away” from her, though he later approved the measure again. In November 2020, Murakhovsky became head of the Omsk regional health ministry. In April 2025, it was announced that he would take over a new veterans’ hospital set to open soon in Omsk.
Maria Pevchikh
Head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s investigations department at the time of Navalny’s poisoning
Pevchikh first started working with Navalny back in 2011, but she only came to public attention in 2020, after police claimed she had accompanied Navalny on his trip through Siberia and then refused to testify. Later, Pevchikh, together with journalists and Navalny himself, conducted the investigation into his poisoning. After Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia, she became head of his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). Under her leadership, the organization released a controversial YouTube series about Russia in the 1990s and got embroiled in disputes with other members of the Russian opposition. Back in 2022, Pevchikh arranged a plan to get Navalny released from prison through a prisoner swap with the West, but she never had the chance to put it into action.
Anastasia Vasilyeva
Head of the doctors’ union Alliance of Doctors
At the time of Navalny’s hospitalization, media reports referred to Vasilyeva, an ophthalmologist, as his “attending physician.” She went to the Omsk hospital after his poisoning, criticized the local doctors’ statements about his condition, and called for him to be sent to Germany. In 2021, the Alliance of Doctors was labeled a “foreign agent,” and Vasilyeva was sentenced to a year of restricted freedom in the “Sanitary Case.” Shortly before the sentence, she announced she was breaking ties with Navalny’s team. As of spring 2023, the Alliance of Doctors website was no longer active, and in an interview with pro-Kremlin YouTube channel Empathy Manuchi, Vasilyeva expressed support for the invasion of Ukraine and accused Navalny of sexual harassment.
Jaka Bizilj
Founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation
Bizilj, a German film producer and social activist, played a key role in saving Navalny: his organization sent a plane to evacuate the politician at the request of Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Pyotr Verzilov, the latter of whom had also been evacuated from Russia after being poisoned in 2018. Bizilj said that organizing Navalny’s evacuation was “incredibly difficult.” When Navalny died in prison in 2024, Bizilj said he had “spent months fearing” that the politician would be killed.
Note: After an earlier version of the article you’re reading was published in Russian, Maria Pevchikh said on X that Jaka Bizilj had nothing to do with Navalny’s transport. According to her, he was moved on a commercial medical plane. Leonid Volkov added that the Cinema for Peace Foundation had “initially provided the contact” with Charité hospital, after which Bizilj “held a big press conference” (a comment Volkov punctuated with a smiling emoticon). At the time of the evacuation, the Cinema for Peace Foundation said it organized Navalny’s transport “for humanitarian reasons” and at the request of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Pyotr Verzilov. The organization described it as an “extremely difficult task.” Reuters, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel reported that the Cinema for Peace Foundation arranged the flight, and Verzilov confirmed it to Meduza. At the time, the FBK did not dispute Bizilj’s statements. On the contrary, Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, reposted a message saying that Cinema for Peace Foundation “sent a plane to Omsk for Navalny.” Additionally, Volkov took part in a press conference with Bizilj and Verzilov on August 21, 2020.
Boris Zimin
Philanthropist
In 2020, Zimin covered the cost of transporting Navalny to Germany — around 79,000 euros ($90,200). (The treatment cost an additional 50,000 euros, or $57,000, paid by others). Zimin had supported the FBK for many years, but after Navalny’s death, he said he was disappointed by the organization allies and had stopped funding it. In 2025, Zimin, who has not lived in Russia for over 20 years, was convicted in absentia on fraud charges. His organization, the Zimin Foundation, was designated an “undesirable organization.”
Stanislav Makshakov
Alleged head of the FSB team that poisoned Navalny
In December 2020, an investigative report revealed the names of eight FSB agents involved in the attack on the opposition leader. The group’s head was identified as military medic Stanislav Makshakov, who at the time served as deputy chief of the FSB’s Institute of Forensic Science, which studies chemical weapons. In 2025, Makshakov became head of the institute. The Russian authorities have not investigated his role in the poisoning and deny that it was an assassination attempt at all.
Konstantin Kudryavtsev
Alleged member of the group that poisoned Navalny
Kudryavtsev is a military chemist whom Navalny managed to speak with (under a false name) before the poisoning investigation was published. Kudryavtsev effectively confirmed that the FSB had tried to kill the politician, blaming the failure on the plane’s emergency landing and the quick work of the paramedics. The FSB called the recording of this conversation a fake. Since then, the only publicly known fact about Kudryavtsev is that he was sanctioned by the E.U. for his role in Navalny’s poisoning.
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