Anna Arutunyan

Special for USA TODAY

MOSCOW — For weeks, LGBT rights groups have sounded alarms that gay men are being persecuted in the Russian republic of Chechnya, but they predicted that a formal government investigation into their allegations of detention and torture would find no supporting evidence.

They are proving to be prescient. On Thursday, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said investigators have so far found no evidence to confirm reports by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper this month that police in Chechnya rounded up 100 suspected gay men and held them in special detention centers, killing at least three.

The newspaper reported on April 1 that the roundup occurred in response to reports of a planned gay pride parade. Earlier this week, Chechen prosecutors launched a probe into the reports.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who met with Putin on Wednesday, also said that there’s been no persecution of gays.

Even before the Kremlin's denial, Oleg Orlov, a member of the board of the Memorial Human Rights Center, predicted, "This will likely just be a formal probe, allowing them to say they didn’t find anything unless there is some sort of pressure from the Kremlin.”

Kadyrov has gone so far as to deny the existence of gay men in Chechnya. “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don't exist in the republic,” Kadyrov’s spokesman Alvi Karimov told Interfax news agency. “If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them since their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.”

LGBT rights groups dispute that, saying dozens have been forced to flee their homes to escape persecution in Chechnya, a restive, majority-Muslim republic in southern Russia.

“People are telling us they were being kept in these detention centers where there are hardly any other criminals other than those suspected of being (gay),” said Tatyana Vinnichenko, who chairs the Russian LGBT Network. “We know of two such detention centers — in (the Chechen towns of) Argun and Tsotsi-Yurt. People are finding it hard to believe that something like this is happening in a country with a constitution, in the 21st century, but it is.”

Vinnichenko said more than 60 people had contacted her organization to say they were being persecuted, and about half have been evacuated with the help of the network. She cited cases of men being imprisoned, beaten, given electric shocks and pressured to name other gay men.

Yelena Milashina, who wrote the story for Novaya Gazeta, temporarily fled to an undisclosed location because of threats last week. A number of reporters at the paper have been killed over the last two decades.

Russia does not criminalize homosexuality, but a controversial 2014 law outlawed the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors,” sparking increased attacks on LGBT people in Russia.

The alleged persecution of gay men prompted former vice president Joe Biden to urge the Trump administration to raise the issue with Russian leaders. "The United States must lead the way to demand an end to these egregious violations of human rights," Biden said.

Human rights activist Orlov said only pressure from Putin on Chechen leader Kadyrov could ensure an honest investigation.

“If the Kremlin uses this occasion to put Chechen authorities in order, then (the investigation) might actually find something,” he said.