The Frog and the Dissident

Days 39–45 — February 8–14, 2026

The Gate

Five European nations concluded that Russia killed Alexei Navalny with poison derived from a dart frog.

The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands issued a joint statement on the fourteenth. They named the toxin: epibatidine, found in the skin of South American poison frogs. It causes paralysis and respiratory arrest. It works like a nerve agent.

Navalny had died nearly one year earlier in an Arctic penal colony, serving a nineteen-year sentence. The Kremlin said natural causes. His widow said murder. Now five governments named the weapon. Yulia Navalnaya said her husband was killed with a chemical weapon.

Russia denied it. The accusation came the same week sixty heads of state gathered in Munich to discuss European security. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the conference. He offered reassurances but did not yield on American demands. The war in Ukraine entered its fourth year. The man who had opposed it from prison was dead, and now the world knew how.

The War

Russia launched more than four hundred drones and forty missiles against Ukraine's power grid on the eighth.

More than a thousand apartment buildings in Kyiv remained without heating in subzero temperatures. On the twelfth, attacks killed one in Kharkiv, four in Dnipropetrovsk, one in Odesa. Air defense intercepted one hundred eleven of one hundred fifty-four drones that night. The rest found their targets.

Total Russian casualties since the invasion began exceeded one million two hundred fifty thousand.

A second round of peace talks was scheduled for Geneva. The first trilateral meeting, in Abu Dhabi, had produced a prisoner exchange but no breakthrough on territory. Russia continued to demand Ukraine surrender twenty percent of its land.

In Munich, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and SDF Commander Mazloum Abdi met Rubio on the sidelines. The January ceasefire between Damascus and the Kurds was holding. The UN called the integration agreement transformative.

In Gaza, Israel had violated the ceasefire more than sixteen hundred times since October. Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal rejected calls to disarm on the eighth, saying surrender of weapons would make Palestinians "easy victims." Aid delivery reached forty-three percent of allocation.

The Silence

The confirmed death toll in Iran reached seven thousand.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency documented seven thousand three confirmed killed. Internal ministry estimates from January suggested thirty thousand to thirty-six thousand dead in the first forty-eight hours. At least two hundred minors had been killed. More than fifty thousand arrested.

On the eighth, security forces arrested three reformist politicians: Ebrahim Asqarzadeh, Mohsen Aminzadeh, and Azar Mansuri. The following day, security forces arrested coalition spokesman Javad Emam. On the tenth and eleventh, anti-government chants erupted during official ceremonies marking the 1979 revolution.

Medical students continued their sit-ins in Tabriz, Mashhad, and Shiraz. The courts had promised more punishment. The punishment continued.

The Border

Operation Metro Surge ended.

Border Czar Tom Homan announced the withdrawal on the twelfth. The operation had resulted in more than four thousand arrests in Minnesota. Two United States citizens had been killed by federal immigration agents. Thousands had protested. The federal judge who had documented dozens of court order violations watched the operation end. What the administration called the largest immigration enforcement operation in American history was over.

Mayor Jacob Frey declared victory. "They thought they could break us," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security shut down at midnight on the fourteenth. More than two hundred sixty thousand employees worked without pay. Democrats demanded increased oversight and restrictions on ICE after the shootings. Ninety percent of the workforce continued operations.

The Human Cost

Eight people died in a school shooting in British Columbia.

An eighteen-year-old killed his mother and stepbrother at their residence in Tumbler Ridge, then drove to the secondary school and killed five students and an education assistant. Twenty-seven others were injured. The suspect died of a self-inflicted wound. It was Canada's deadliest mass shooting since Nova Scotia in 2020.

Tumbler Ridge is a village of twenty-seven hundred people in the Canadian Rockies, more than a thousand kilometers northeast of Vancouver.

In Sudan, a ferry capsized on the Nile in Shendi District on the eleventh. Fifteen dead. Six missing. Six rescued. The boat had carried twenty-seven people, including women and children.

Famine conditions were expected to persist through May without a ceasefire. The Rapid Support Forces continued their advance toward Khartoum.

In South Sudan, direct military confrontations spread to eight of ten states. At least two hundred eighty thousand people had been displaced in Jonglei alone since late December. Violence had not reached this scale since 2018. The army announced Operation Enduring Peace.

In Colombia, flooding across sixteen departments killed forty-four. Heavy rains since late January had affected seventy-two thousand families. Twelve thousand homes were damaged; four thousand destroyed.

The Vote

Bangladesh held its first elections since the 2024 uprising.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party won a two-thirds majority. Tarique Rahman, seventeen years in exile, was set to become prime minister. Voter turnout reached sixty percent. A constitutional referendum on the July Charter was held alongside the vote.

In Haiti, elections were planned for August and December under Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime. One and a half million people remained displaced by gang violence.

The Corridor

Vice President JD Vance became the first American vice president to visit Armenia. He arrived on the ninth, visited the genocide memorial at Tsitsernakaberd, and signed a civil nuclear agreement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The following day he traveled to Azerbaijan, met with President Ilham Aliyev, and signed a strategic partnership. The administration called the initiative the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

The Ledger

A frog's poison, refined and weaponized, killed the man who challenged the Kremlin. Europe named the toxin nearly one year after the death. In Munich, sixty leaders gathered while drones struck Ukraine and Geneva awaited the next round of talks. In Gaza, the ceasefire frayed. Iran's courts arrested reformists during anniversary celebrations of a revolution they once supported. Minneapolis prevailed; the surge withdrew; the department shut down. Eight died in a Canadian village. Fifteen drowned on the Nile. Forty-four were lost to floodwaters in Colombia. Bangladesh voted for the first time since the streets won. The vice president walked through the Caucasus signing deals. The chronicle records. The dead are named when naming is possible.

Here continues the account of the year 2026.