"In December 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin said he could not understand why followers of the religion were being persecuted.

The Russian Orthodox Church welcomed the ban in 2017. A senior Orthodox cleric, Metropolitan Hilarion, called the Jehovah's Witnesses a "totalitarian sect" on Russian TV.

He said: "It's hard to deny that these cultists will remain and continue their activity... but at least they'll stop openly claiming to be a Christian faith, in other words, in the market place of existing Christian confessions this product will no longer be on display."



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55061919