Over the past year, three Russians living in exile are believed to have been poisoned, one in Munich, one in Prague and one in Tbilisi, Georgia. This is the conclusion reached on Tuesday, August 15 by investigators from The Insider, a Russian publication which is also in exile. It's considered to be a reliable source, and has cooperated with British website Bellingcat on dozens of other poisoning cases, including that of opponent Alexei Navalny on August 20, 2020.

Unlike Navalny, neither the culprits nor the poison used have been formally identified in the case of the three Russians in exile. But The Insider considers it necessary to disclose this information "to warn activists and journalists who have left Russia." These alleged poisonings allegedly show that "enemies of Russia" continue to be targeted, particularly on European soil, since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Unlike the other two women, Elena Kostyuchenko's case had never been raised publicly. The 36-year-old journalist, one of Novaya Gazeta's leading writers, was the last Russian reporter to continue working in Ukraine after the country was invaded. Before her paper was forced to censor her articles and then close down, she was able to report, from March 2022, on the crimes committed by the Russian army in the occupied Kherson region. Precise threats then prompted her to leave Ukraine and settle in Germany.

It was in Munich, where she had gone to apply for a new Ukrainian visa, that the young woman was probably poisoned, on October 17, 2022. After eating a meal which tasted strange, Elena Kostyuchenko began to feel the first symptoms: a strange smell emanating from her body ("like rotten fruit"), profuse sweating, lack of strength, inability to think. In the days and weeks that followed, other symptoms followed, including acute stomach pains, insomnia, swelling of the hands and face, and skin discoloration.

The journalist waited 10 days for tests. "I'm not dangerous enough to be a target," she thought. The results only served to rule out one by one the various illnesses or food-poisoning tested for. The half-dozen or so doctors and specialists consulted later by The Insider were unanimously inclined towards the verdict of deliberate poisoning. The most serious disorders shown by these tests are in the liver and kidneys.

The German security services, for their part, only began searching for suspicious toxins in mid-December. An investigation was launched, but it was compromised by a series of failures.

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