Opposition activist and Moscow mayoral candidate Alexei Navalny contests election results

Opposition activist Alexei Navalny has arrived at a Moscow courthouse to start a lawsuit contesting the results of Moscow's mayoral election, which he lost to the Kremlin-backed incumbent.

Navalny wrote on his blog that he planned to bring more than 50,000 pages of documents to court on Thursday to support his claim that there had been violations at the polls. He received 27 percent of the vote in Sunday's election which incumbent Sergei Sobyanin won 51 percent.

If Sobyanin had taken less than 50 percent, he would have been forced into a run-off against Navalny.

Navalny, who still faces up to five years in prison on embezzlement charges, has urged his supporters to protest peacefully and legally against the election result.