Russian authorities have detained Jehovah's Witnesses in the central region of Mordovia, police said on Thursday, as part of a crackdown which the UN warned was setting a "dangerous precedent".
Russia brands the US evangelical Christian movement a totalitarian sect and in 2017 designated it as an extremist organisation, ordering its dissolution in the country.
On Wednesday, a Russian court sentenced Dennis Christensen, a Danish Jehovah's Witness, to six years in prison for "extremism" - the first adherent of the movement to be sent to prison in Russia.
The same day, several Jehovah's Witnesses were detained in Mordovia, police said.
"The large-scale operation" was conducted by the FSB security service together with police and other law enforcement agencies, police said.
"An investigation is under way," police said in a statement.
The sentencing of Christensen provoked an outcry, with rights groups comparing Moscow's pressure on the group to the persecution of the Soviet era.
The UN on Thursday condemned what it called a "dangerous precedent" and criticised the "criminalisation of the right to religious freedom."
Asked whether the Jehovah's Witnesses were an extremist or religious organisation according to common sense, Peskov said: "We cannot be guided by the notion of common sense for state purposes."
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