BBC: The participation of openly gay, lesbian and transgender athletes in the Tokyo Olympics has led to an upsurge in anti-LGBT commentary on Russian state TV.
Extremely offensive language, some of which appears in this article, was used by the hosts and guests on talk shows aired by the country's two most popular television channels.
Even though the Kremlin has tended to not publicly support anti-LGBT sentiment, it fits in with the state ideology of defending Russia's "traditional values" against the West.
The state-run channels dedicated several of their talk shows to speak disparagingly about LGBT athletes at the Games, using words like "abomination" and "perversion".
In response, an International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman told the BBC they were contacting the official Russian broadcaster, one of the two channels in question, to express their concern.
"Discrimination has absolutely no place at the Olympic Games," they said in a statement.
What was said on air?
British gold medal-winning diver Tom Daley, who is gay, and a transgender woman weightlifter from New Zealand, Laurel Hubbard, were particularly targeted on Rossiya 1.
The 26 July edition of the 60 Minutes programme was especially rife with slurs. One of the panellists, Alexei Zhuravlyov, who is a member of the Russian parliament, said he was "disgusted" by gay and transgender people.
"We stand opposed to all this smut and perversion, strongly opposed," he told the show, pointing at the studio screen which showed Hubbard.
"We stand against this abomination," he shouted. At one point, Zhuravlyov used an offensive Russian word to describe gay men. With video » | Vitaly Shevchenko | BBC Monitoring | Wednesday, August 4, 2021
