MOSCOW — A Russian court on Thursday ordered the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to stay in jail, days after tens of thousands of people demanding his release filled streets and squares of cities across Russia last weekend.
The court rejected Mr. Navalny’s appeal against a lower court’s ruling to keep him in custody for 30 days for parole violations, which he has denied. Mr. Navalny was detained earlier this month after flying back to Moscow for the first time since he was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in August. He accused President Vladimir V. Putin of ordering the poisoning, calling it an attempted political assassination.
Appearing in court via a video link for the first time since mass protests against his incarceration, Mr. Navalny ridiculed the proceedings as a politically driven campaign to silence him and scare his supporters.
“I have an answer to why this is happening,” said Mr. Navalny. “This blatant lawlessness is done to scare me and everyone else,” he said. “The judges do not do it; they are just obedient slaves here — it is done by the people who have robbed our country.”
