This screen grab from a handout footage provided by the Moscow City Court press service shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, charged with violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement, gesturing a heart shape from inside a glass cell during a court hearing in Moscow on February 2, 2021. (HANDOUT / MOSCOW CITY COURT PRESS / AFP)

MOSCOW - A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to 3.5 years in real jail time in defiance of pressure from domestic protesters and Western countries.

Navalny got a suspended sentence of 3.5 years behind bars in December 2014 for a fraud case concerning French cosmetics company Yves Rocher, and he was required to show up at Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) regularly during the probation period until the end of 2020.

Alexei Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova said the defense will appeal the court ruling and resort to the European Court of Human Rights after all legal procedures in Russia are exhausted

The Moscow court ruled to replace Navalny's suspended sentence with real time in prison after the FSIN charged him with breaching the probation conditions by failing to show up for checks.

Navalny told the court he had been unable to report to the prison service at the end of last year because he was recovering in Germany from being poisoned. 

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The prison service said its complaints pre-dated his poisoning and that Navalny had in any case been well enough to meet journalists after being discharged from a Berlin hospital in September.

Navalny's lawyer Olga Mikhailova said the defense will appeal the court ruling and resort to the European Court of Human Rights after all legal procedures in Russia are exhausted.

She added that the 44-year-old opposition figure would actually serve two years and eight months in jail because of time already spent under house arrest.

Navalny supporters, on hearing the ruling, encouraged people to gather in central Moscow though riot police had already taken up position. The Moscow metro shut down three central stations.

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Reuters reporters saw hundreds of protesters and the police detain some of them. 

Outside the court earlier on Tuesday, Reuters reporters saw riot police detain around 70 of Navalny’s supporters. The OVD-Info monitoring group later reported 503 arrests across Moscow.

Navalny was detained by FSIN officers on Jan 17 upon his landing at a Moscow airport from Germany, where he received medical treatment for alleged poisoning over the past months.

The activist fell into a coma on a flight from the Russian city of Tomsk to Moscow on Aug 20, 2020. He was then transferred to a hospital in Berlin with suspected poisoning symptoms.

In early September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Navalny was poisoned with the Soviet-style Novichok nerve agent.

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Russian authorities have repeatedly denied the accusations and asked for solid evidence from Germany.

Navalny's detention sparked mass protests in major Russian cities at the past two weekends as his supporters took to the streets demanding his release. Western countries have also pressured Moscow to free him.

With Reuters inputs