Russian opposition leader Navalny set free after 25 days in jail

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been released from prison after more than three and a half weeks in jail.

"Today at 9:00 am (0600 GMT) Alexei Navalny was taken from the cell block to the Moscow central district police department and they have now let him out of there," his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said in a message posted on Twitter on Friday.

"Alexei has arrived (on the premises of) Anti-Corruption Fund (the organization he created to denounce the corruption of elites),” she said.

The 41-year-old lawyer and political activist had been sentenced to 30 days behind bars for organizing unauthorized protests in which thousands of his supporters held nationwide anti-government demonstrations. He is currently regarded as the opposition leader in Russia.

Navalny, who is married with two children, has been arrested numerous times before by Russian authorities over various charges including embezzlement and fraud.

He has gained the support of his followers, who are mostly young people, via social media, blogging about alleged corruption at some of big state-owned corporations.

Navalny made headlines in late March after he was briefly arrested along with some 1,000 people for protests which came following his allegations about corruption in the government.

He again made the headlines in April when an attacker doused his face with a green antiseptic liquid.

The outspoken opposition leader and critic of President Vladimir Putin, who is undoubtedly one of, if not the, most powerful people in the world, has announced that he would run for the presidency in the 2018 election, describing his presidential bid as a "clash of ideas" with the old establishment.

Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center last month showed that Putin enjoyed huge popularity among Russians.

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