.@navalny's house arrest now *officially* over, says court, as his suspended sentence comes into effect. He can leave Moscow, not Russia.

.@navalny's house arrest now *officially* over, says court, as his suspended sentence comes into effect. He can leave Moscow, not Russia.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny said on Monday he wouldn't comply with the terms of his house arrest and had cut off his electronic monitoring tag.

"I refuse to comply with the requirements of my illegal detention under house arrest," he wrote on his blog . "You can cut off the bracelet with kitchen scissors, with some effort."

The Kremlin critic remains under house arrest, despite receiving a suspended sentence of three and half years on trumped-up fraud charges on Dec. 30. His brother, Oleg, was jailed for the same amount of time, sparking protests in Moscow .

Navalny said his continued house arrest is illegal because he has already been sentenced, but authorities are taking the unusual step of keeping him detained until the verdict is published later this month, Reuters reported.

"It is stupid to brag, but I am the first person in the history of Russian courts to be sitting under house arrest after the verdict," Navalny wrote.

Navalny expects a court to prolong his house arrest indefinitely under one of five other criminal proceedings against him and his allies, after his and his brother's sentences came into effect Jan. 15. Russian prosecutors have increasingly turned to house arrest in recent years as a method of curbing dissidents' activities without sparking a flurry of interest by jailing them.

"I'm not going to go anywhere, the requirements of my movements are limited to trips to the office and back, and spending time with my family," Navalny wrote. Moscow police told the state newswire RIA Novosti that they would detain Navalny and return him to his apartment if they found him outside it. By Monday evening, officials from Russia's prison service had visited Navalny's apartment to photograph his bracelet and his leg, then write a report, Navalny tweeted.