Elena Klimova, founder of Children 404, a support website for young LGBT Russians, has been fined 50,000 roubles (€770) for distributing “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors”.

Klimova, winner of the International Award at 2014’s GALAs ceremony, was fined 50,000 roubles for her work as founder of Children-404, a supportive online community on social networking site Vkontakte where teenagers can discuss LGBT issues.

Klimova successfully appealed against a fine for the same offence levied by a court in the same town in January.

Children-404 was founded in response to the introduction of Russia’s draconian ‘anti-propaganda’ law in 2013.

The law, which drew criticism from human rights groups and LGBT activist worldwide, defines ‘propaganda’ as “the spreading information in order to form non-traditional sexual desires in children, describing such relations as attractive, promoting a distorted understanding of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional relations and through unwanted exposure to information that could provoke interest in such relations”.

A court order blocking the Children 404 site for “promoting homosexual propaganda” came into effect on April 25. Since then Klimova has continued to fight against homophobia by posting some of the hate mail she receives in an album called ‘Beautiful People And The Things They Say To Me’ on the Russian social network VKontakte.