Two Kyrgyz nationals have been fined and deported from Russia for allegedly propagating radical Islam.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said on August 3 that the two men, whose identities were not disclosed, have been banned from entering Russia for five years.

According to the FSB, the men were spreading the ideas of the Salafi branch of Islam among local residents of the Chelyabinsk region in Russia's Ural Mountains.

The Salafi branch of Islam has been branded as extremist and banned in some former Soviet republics.

Salafists follow a strict form of Sunni Islam and do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi'a and Sufism.

The majority of Muslims in Central Asia and Russia's Volga region and Urals Mountains are followers of Hanafi, a more moderate branch of Sunni Islam.

Earlier in the year, several people were arrested or sentenced for promoting radical Islamic ideas in the Chelyabinsk region -- which borders Kazakhstan and Russia's mainly Muslim region of Bashkortostan.

Based on reporting by uralpress.ru and Interfax