Russian legislators passed a bill on Friday prohibiting gender-changing procedures, in an overwhelming majority.

"The State Duma banned gender reassignment in Russia," the lower house said in a statement, adding that all factions had voted to introduce the new laws "unanimously."

"This decision will protect our citizens and our children," Chairperson of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said in a separate statement on social media.

He pointed to what he described as a growing trend of gender reassignment in the United States and said this was leading to the degeneration of the country.

"This is unacceptable for us," he added, explaining why the proposed ban had won the backing of the lower house.

The new legislation forbids transition surgery, with the exception of children with congenital disorders, and bars people from changing their gender in government-issued documents.

It must first be approved by the upper house of Parliament and President Vladimir Putin before entering into force.

Its spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said after the vote that some concerns over the legislation were "perhaps excessive."

The Duma said the new laws will have sweeping consequences for Russian transgender people: "Citizens who have already changed gender will be prohibited from adopting children, and their marriages will be annulled."

Since the start of its offensive in Ukraine, Russia has adopted a series of conservative measures, particularly against the LGBTQ community, aiming to clamp down on behavior authorities consider deviant and Western-influenced.

The country's most prominent LGBTQ advocacy groups have been forced to close or branded "foreign agents," a status with Soviet-era overtones that piles undue administrative pressure on the organizations.

Russia's FSB security service announced earlier this week that it had arrested a transgender rights activist accused of "high treason" for supporting the Ukrainian military.

And last November, Russian lawmakers approved a bill banning all forms of "LGBTQ propaganda," a move with far-reaching consequences for book publishing and film distribution.

Russia's Bolshoi Theatre permanently dropped a ballet about dance legend Rudolf Nureyev over the rules and publishers said it could result in a ban of some Russian classics like Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita."

Russia under Putin's decadeslong rule has seen deepening ties between the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church, which has promoted traditional social values and cautioned against the influence of Western societies.