A Moscow court on January 28 ordered jailed anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny to be held in pre-trial detention until February, when he will face a second hearing that could see him sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.

Navalny was arrested on January 17 on his return to Russia after convalescing in Germany for five months following an attempt to kill him using the deadly military-grade nerve agent Novichok.

The Kremlin has shrugged off international condemnation of the arrest as politically motivated and will try to brazen out the mass protests planned for this weekend by Team Navalny. Shortly after arriving in Russia Navalny called for street demonstrations on January 23 and somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000, according to various reports, came out in support of him and in defiance of the Kremlin in over 100 cities and towns across the country.

The court found him guilty of alleged parole violations and also rejected an appeal by Navalny lawyers against his detention. New charges for breaking the terms of the parole were brought only two days before the parole’s term was due to expire. The suspended sentence was imposed in the 2014 Yves Rocher case against Navalny on fraud charges that the activist says were politically motivated.

Navalny appeared in court on Thursday by video link from jail, railing against what he called absurd allegations trumped up by authorities to sideline him for political reasons.

“You won’t succeed in frightening us. We are the majority... I’m happy that more and more people understand that the law is on our side, that we’re in the right,” he told the presiding judge as cited by Reuters.

“We’ll never allow ... these people to seize and steal our country. Yes, brute force is on your side now. You can...put me in handcuffs. (But) that will not continue forever,” he said.

Navalny has launched a well-thought-out campaign to embarrass the Kremlin following his inevitable arrest on arriving in Russia. The day after he was taken into custody he released a two-hour investigative documentary into “Putin’s Palace” that details Putin’s alleged ownership of a luxury mansion on the shores of the Black Sea, and dived into the details of the network of KGB colleagues formed during Putin’s years in Dresden. The video has received over 100mn views in the first week since it was released, making it by far the most successful video Navalny has ever released.

Police have already begun detaining key members of Team Navalny ahead of the second weekend’s demonstration. In a provocative move, Team Navalny have set Lubyanka Square as the meeting point in central Moscow, a stone’s throw from Red Square, which is dominated by the FSB headquarters.

Among those detained is Navalny’s brother Oleg, activist Lyubov Sobol, one of the best known faces of the protest after Navalny himself, and his lawyer Olga Mikhailova, who calmly played the piano as police broke into her apartment to search it before detaining her. They have been held for breaking coronavirus (COVID-19) social distancing rules.

Navalny's day in court keeps him in the spotlight and will likely fuel more demonstrators to take to the streets at the weekend. After the ruling was issued, Navalny told the judge: “Everything was clear to me before the start of the court hearing, thank you,” Navalny said Reuters reports.

In previous politically motivated arrests large demonstrations have managed to force the Kremlin to back down and drop the charges. When journalist Ivan Golunov was arrested in June 2019 on trumped up drug dealing charges there were large demonstrations on the street outside the court and Russia’s main newspapers ran identical front pages saying “I/We are Ivan Golunov.” The authorities quickly dropped the charges and released Golunov.

Navalny is unlikely to be so lucky, as the stakes in his case are much higher, with crucial parliamentary elections slated for September, which Team Navalny is working hard to disrupt with its “Smart Voting” tactics: the team try to muster votes for any candidate that is likely to defeat the incumbent Kremlin proxy party United Russia.

And preparations for the elections are already underway. On January 28 three political parties merged to create a Kremlin-sponsored alternative to the deeply unpopular United Russia, which Navalny dubbed “the party of crooks and thieves,” a moniker that stuck.

The leaders of the A Just Russia, For Truth and Patriots of Russia parties signed a unification manifesto to form the new and clumsily named: A Just Russia – For Truth party, led by Sergei Mironov, who was the leader of A Just Russia.

Navalny’s next hearing is scheduled for February 2, when the court will decide if his 3.5-year suspended sentence from a fraud case in 2014 will be converted to real jail time. Police have also recently started a new investigation into alleged corruption, accusing Navalny of using money donated to his charity for personal expenses. At the same time, state-media has launched a major smear campaign, accusing Navalny of working for foreign intelligence agencies.

Russian investigators announced they have also opened a criminal investigation into Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, for allegedly urging teenagers to take part in what it said were illegal protests on January 23. Volkov is currently in Latvia, from where he is co-ordinating with Navalny's regional network to organise the upcoming protests.

Russia is facing another dramatic weekend of nationwide protests that will be another test of the mood in the country. There is an obvious parallel with the popular protest in Belarus that are now in their sixth month, but as bne IntelliNews argued in a recent opinion piece, it will be much more difficult to gather the same momentum in Russia, simply because Putin has a lot more genuine support than Belarus' self-appointed President Alexander Lukashenko.

The response to Navalny's arrest so far has been muted. Brussels foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on January 25 he will press for Navalny's release but only next month during a scheduled visit to the Kremlin.

"This will be a good opportunity to discuss with my Russian counterpart all relevant issues, to pass clear messages on the current situation," Borrell said after a meeting of the bloc's 27 foreign ministers.

The ministers debated slapping sanctions on the Kremlin after the detention of Navalny and thousands of protesters across Russia, but decided this was "premature," one diplomat said.

"For sure, the council is ready to react according to the circumstances and to take appropriate actions if the circumstances require," Borrell said.

The new administration of US President Joe Biden has also issued strongly worded statements, but so far taken no action, as it was focused on getting a new START III nuclear missile deal extension done first earlier this week.