Veteran Russian journalist believes she was poisoned last year in Germany. null

A joint investigation carried out by The Insider and Bellingcat has concluded that the veteran Russian journalist and longtime Novaya Gazeta staffer Elena Kostyuchenko was most likely poisoned in Munich in October 2022.

Speaking about her experience to independent Russian media outlet Meduza, Kostyuchenko said that the first symptom she noticed was her own unpleasant body odour. “The smell of sweat was sharp and strange: it smelled like rotten fruit.”

Shortly afterwards the journalist recalled feeling feeble and disoriented and being unable to breathe properly, which she initially attributed to a recent Covid infection. The next day, however, Kostyuchenko was woken up by a sharp pain in her stomach.

“It was weird,” the journalist said, describing it as if someone was turning the pain on and off. “I tried to sit up but had to lie back down. My head was spinning so much it seemed like the room was rotating around me. Each spin made me more nauseous. I managed to get to the bathroom, where I vomited.”

Kostyuchenko said.

It took Kostyuchenko 10 days to see a doctor. A blood test showed that her ALT and AST liver enzyme levels were five times higher than normal, while another test revealed that her urine contained blood.

The doctor treating Kostyuchenko excluded all causes for her illness, save poisoning, and recommended she have toxin tests at Berlin’s Charité hospital, where Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny received treatment following his attempted poisoning in 2020. Kostyuchenko then went to the police to request the necessary tests.

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The German police initially launched an investigation but later closed it, saying that it was virtually impossible to detect the presence of toxins in the body after such a long time. In July, Kostyuchenko was told that the investigation had been reopened to allow more tests to be carried out.

A source told The Insider that law enforcement agencies eventually conducted a mass spectrometry blood test. While the results detected a certain agent in quantities that far outweighed normal levels, they remained insufficiently high to conclude that the journalist had been poisoned.