A Moscow court yesterday upheld a ruling to jail the Kremlin's most prominent opponent Alexei Navalny, sealing his first lengthy prison sentence in a decade of legal battles with Russian authorities. Judge Dmitry Balashov dismissed Navalny's appeal against a recent decision to imprison him for violating the terms of a suspended sentence on embezzlement charges. The anti-corruption campaigner was ordered on February 2 to serve the time in a penal colony for breaching parole terms while in Germany recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin. Russia has come under increasing Western pressure to release Navalny since he was detained on arrival at a Moscow airport in January.