A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered an imprisonment of nearly three years for rival Alexey Navalny, unanimously condemning the West against the backdrop of the suppression of a protest movement. The United States, the European Union, Germany, France, the United Kingdom …: have all called for their “immediate release”. The Russian Foreign Ministry “cut off from the reality” Western responses and condemned “interference in the affairs of a sovereign state”. Judge Natalia Reppnikova on Tuesday evening speculated that the man who has established himself as Vladimir Putin’s chief critic in ten years has violated his judicial review and should therefore serve a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence suspended from 2014 , Spent at least ten months that year under House arrest. According to her lawyer, Olga Mikhalova, her client should spend “approximately” two years and eight months in prison. But he will appeal. According to special NGO OVDInfo, about 700 people were arrested during various pro-naval operations in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the evening. Russian media reported the arrest of protesters and severely beaten journalists with sticks. This is the first lengthy incident for Navalny, who specializes in investigating the corruption of nobles and accuses the Russian president of ordering his poison in August. As soon as the sentence was announced, his organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund, called for an immediate demonstration in the Kremlin’s feet. According to news agency AFP, a crowd of helmeted police and cellphone vans were immediately deployed at the scene for the arrest. “Putin thief!” Several hundred protesters turned up in the city center. “There is no justice in this country,” Oksana, 36, told AFP. The 44-year-old opponent ruled in a glass cage reserved for defendants, hand in pocket. He sent heart signals to his wife Yulia. At the hearing, he condemned a case aimed at “intimidating millions” of Russia. “You can’t jail the whole country!” He made the announcement, referring to the thousands of arrests in the last two weekends at the biggest opposition rallies in years. Alexei Navalny reiterated that it was Mr. Putin who ordered the FSB, the security services, to poison him. It would “go down in history as the poison of panties,” he said. In December, Navalny claimed in a video that he had cheated an FSB agent over the phone to apply the poison to one of her underwear at her hotel in Siberia. Authorities have dismissed these allegations. European laboratories have confirmed the use of Novichok-type venom developed by the USSR for military purposes. The case was investigated Tuesday as a request from prison services that accused Mr Navalny of not honoring his judicial review as part of his suspended sentence. This was later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights. Mr Navalny said he missed appointments due to his recovery in Germany. But the judge felt that he had missed more before being hospitalized. The adversary was arrested on 17 January on his return to Russia. The assassination attempt and arrest triggered a wave of Western criticism, against the backdrop of an already illicit affair. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borel, is scheduled to be in Moscow on Friday, while some members advocate new sanctions. On Tuesday evening, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Mr Navalny’s imprisonment, saying that “political disagreement is never a crime”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the verdict “far from the rule of law” and called for an end to the suppression of demonstrations. The opponent is still the target of many actions. On Friday, he will appear for “defamation” of a veteran. He is also accused of fraud in another case. Many of its employees have been placed under house arrest, imprisonment or prosecution. The rival nonetheless succeeded in mobilizing thousands of supporters on 23 and 31 January in about 100 Russian cities. This opposition of unprecedented scale over the years comes against the backdrop of the approach of legislative elections in the fall and the unpopularity of the party in power. It is also influenced by the proliferation of an investigation by Mr. Navalny, who accused Vladimir Putin of being the beneficiary of the “palace” and which has been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube. The Russian president had to deny himself.