Russian TV personality Anton Krasovsky shocked people in his studio and the viewing audience earlier this year after coming out of the closet live on the air, CBS News reports.

The 37-year-old Krasovsky, then editor-in-chief of Kontr TV, had covered anti-gay propaganda laws in Russia and felt like a "hypocrite" before deciding to publicly admit that he was gay, according to an interview with Snob.ru.

Near the end of the show, he said, "I’m gay, and I’m just the same person as you, my dear audience, as President Putin, as Prime Minister Medvedev and deputies of our Duma."

"I decided to be open, and it's time to be open for me. That's it," Krasovsky recently told CNN.

Although the incident happened several months ago, there's hardly any record or way to find any video, since it's basically been scrubbed from the internet — as if the entire incident never happened, according to CBS.

In Krasovsky's interview with Snob.ru, he explains why that is:

Then they immediately blocked all my corporative accounts, my email. Literally immediately, overnight. They deleted not only my face from the website, but also all of my TV shows, as if I’d never really existed. The next day I wrote to Minaev that I was totally shocked. Because it takes them half a day to put up a banner when I ask them to, and here we had such efficiency. One could say they can when they want to. Now they’ve put everything back, but you couldn’t say why, really.

Russia is facing international tension over their crackdown on homosexuals, with a law passed on July 1 making it illegal to hold gay pride rallies, or even to tell children that gay people exist.