Navalny cuts ties ... with his tracking bracelet

Lawyer-turned-blogger and Russian political opposition leader Alexei Navalny has unilaterally declared an end to his house arrest and — “with some effort” — cut the electronic monitoring bracelet off his ankle.

He accomplished this task with ordinary kitchen scissors, according to a statement.

Blame shoddy Russian workmanship ... and a Russian penal system that is struggling to find a way to quiet Navalny without further raising his profile.

Navalny has been a steady critic of the government of Vladimir since championing mass street demonstrations against state corruption three years ago. In what was widely seen as a retaliatory move, Russian courts recently found Navalny and his brother, Oleg, guilty of inflating shipping charges for a Russian subsidiary of a French cosmetics company. The company used a courier owned by the brothers.

Sentencing had been scheduled for mid-January, but courts abruptly rendered a sentence last week, the day before New Years Eve, in what was seen as an attempt to short-circuit planned protest gatherings. Oleg was given jail time, but Alexei Navalny was handed a three-and-a-half year suspended sentence and returned to house arrest, pending what was termed and official filing of his sentence.