The head of Russia’s Human Rights Council has said the state ban on LGBT propaganda has no bearing on private homosexual relationships, and that he hopes gay people have not been negatively affected.

In an interview with the news outlet RBC published on Tuesday, Valery Fadeev was asked whether he thought the Kremlin is interfering in citizens’ private lives.

“Homosexual relationships and propagandizing those relationships are different things,” the human rights chief responded. “A homosexual relationship, that’s private life. And no one interferes with that. Gays have always been around, in all times, more or less.” 

“The State Duma did not ban personal relationships, it banned propaganda,” he stressed.

When asked whether gay people are affected by the ban, Fadeev replied that he thought not.

“No. I hope the gays are still doing okay,” he said.

However, the wider LGBT movement is “a very damaging imported” threat to Russian society, Fadeev said.

On Sunday, Russian media reported that police had raided three Moscow nightclubs on suspicion of “spreading LGBT propaganda.” According to the Interior Ministry, a number of weapons were seized at one of the clubs. The establishment was also found to have been selling illegal, presumably unlicensed, alcohol.

Moscow has been implementing stricter laws regarding LGBTQ information for more than a decade, first banning related propaganda among minors in 2013 and broadening the ban to cover adults in 2022. Soon after, the Russian Supreme Court outlawed the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization.

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