300 Muslims Detained In Russia At Prayer Room: President Vladimir Putin Proposes ‘Harsh’ Fight Against Radical Islamists

Russian police detained 300 Muslims in Moscow on Friday, moments after President Vladimir Putin proposed a "harsh" fight against radical Islamists in the country to avoid incidents at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Putin told security force officers in a meeting on Friday that the "fight against corruption, crime and the insurgency has to be carried out harshly and consistently," according to Fox News.

Police told Radio Free Europe that 170 of the 300 Muslims detained were from foreign countries and were detained at a Muslim prayer room in Moscow.

Radical Islamist literature was also confiscated at the prayer room, Radio Free Europe also reports.

The arrest of the 300 Muslims marks the third raid this year that targeted Muslim places of worship in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Reuters reported.

Putin's push to combat radical Islam comes months after the Boston Marathon bombing plotted by the Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev and before the beginning of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Putin is also pushing increased security measures as Sochi is located in the Caucasus Mountain region of southern Russia, where radical Islamic and separatist groups have garnered increased influence.

Approximately 23 million Muslims live in Russia, mainly in the Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya republics.

Many Islamic militant groups in Russia favor self determination and separatists movements that oppose the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from the country's political decision-making process.

Perhaps one of Putin's biggest security measure yet was deploying Russian navy units to the Mediterranean Sea, monitoring the Syrian region.