A 23-year-old Russian violinist called Artem Kolesov emailed BuzzFeed News last week with a message that began: “Hello, I know that you receive thousands of emails every day, but I would like to share my story with you.”

He explained that he grew up in a Pentecostal Christian family in rural Russia, that both his parents were pastors, and that he had just come out as gay on YouTube.

“I did it,” he wrote, “Because it breaks my heart to know how many Russian children and other LGBT youth around the world feel like they’re alone”.

Kolesov sent a link to the YouTube video – which he uploaded a day after his birthday – and said he hoped that it might at least help one child.

It detailed the years he spent praying that God would take his homosexuality away, the depression he suffered, the five attempts to kill himself, and his reasons for speaking out now.

He agreed to be interviewed on the phone at first, and then via Skype. It was just days after reports had emerged that the authorities in Chechnya were arresting, imprisoning and murdering gay men.

His video reveals another, invisible kind of prison that exists in Russia for LGBT people – one of silence and fear. In 2013, Russia introduced a vague, far-reaching law, referred to in the West as the “gay propaganda” law that forbids any suggestion to children that homosexuality is normal and that in practice, human rights organisations attest, has muzzled LGBT people across the country.

It has also helped to shut down organisations and websites that try to help sexual minorities and, according to reports, fuelled violence and hostility toward LGBT people. But Kolesov refuses to be silent.