A village of seven people had reportedly been scheduled to host the first-ever Russian gay pride parade authorized by local authorities, LGBT activists said Wednesday, however, a local official said Thursday that the event had been prohibited.
In the past decade, local administrations have either banned gay pride parades outright or backtracked on earlier promises to allow them, often citing a 2013 law banning “homosexual propaganda” among minors.
Gay rights activist Nikolai Alexeyev said Wednesday that the head of a small town on the Volga River had granted a request to hold a gay pride demonstration in a nearby village.
“The head of the Novoulyanovsk administration, Svetlana Kosarinova, is the bravest person in Russia. She’s allowed a gay pride in the village of Yablonevy, with a population of 7 people,” Alexeyev wrote on social media Wednesday.
Alexeyev said holding the event in another village with a population of 131 people “would have been too progressive for modern Russia.”
“Thus, the first authorized gay parade in the history of Russia should take place on Aug. 26,” he wrote.
However, on Thursday, an unnamed official from the Novoulyanovsk administration said that the event had been banned by the city's head, Gennady Denikayev, the Govorit Moskva radio station reported.
"It will no longer be happening. The city head was not aware of the event, so he prohibited it," the official was cited as saying.
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