Exiled Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko victim of suspected poisoning in Munich

Elena Kostyuchenko, a Russian investigative journalist formerly with Novaya Gazeta and reporting for Meduza, said she fell seriously ill on 18 October 2022, reportedly the day after a visit to Munich, where she had gone to apply for a Ukrainian visa to cover the war. According to her account, symptoms began on a train from Munich to Berlin and included severe headaches, weakness, shortness of breath and nausea. Over the following days she reported facial swelling, swollen fingers and toes, redness on her palms and soles, and vomiting, with later tests indicating abnormal liver enzyme levels and blood in her urine.

Doctors reportedly told her she may have been poisoned, but the cause was never medically or forensically confirmed. Blood testing at Berlin's Charite hospital was described as inconclusive, and a mass spectrometry analysis reportedly detected an agent above normal levels but not high enough to establish poisoning. Berlin prosecutors confirmed an investigation into a suspected attempted murder; an initial inquiry was closed in May 2023 for lack of evidence and later reopened. The case was made public in August 2023 through accounts in Meduza and a joint investigation by The Insider and Bellingcat, and was reported alongside the suspected poisoning of fellow exiled journalist Irina Babloyan.

Attribution remains unconfirmed and speculative. No forensic or medical confirmation of poisoning has been established, and laboratory results were reportedly inconclusive. The case has been examined by Berlin prosecutors as a suspected attempted murder and reported in the context of a wider pattern of alleged poisonings targeting female Russian journalists critical of the Kremlin. While some experts cited in published investigations considered poisoning the most plausible explanation for the symptoms, this falls short of proof, and no perpetrator, substance, or state involvement has been demonstrated. The incident should be treated cautiously as a suspected, not verified, attack.