A court in Russia has fined a newspaper editor for publishing an interview with a gay schoolteacher who defended homosexuality.

Alexander Suturin, editor of the Molodoi Dalnevostochnik weekly, was ordered to pay a fine of 50,000 roubles (around £850) on a charge of violating a controversial law banning gay "propaganda" among minors, according to the Interfax news agency.

The law has drawn strong international criticism and calls by gay activists and others for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympics, which run from February 7 to 23.

The court in Khabarovsk, a city on the Amur River in Russia's far east on the border with China, found Suturin guilty because he published an interview with teacher Alexander Yermoshkin, who lost his job because he is homosexual.

Suturin said he would appeal against the ruling.