Kremlin comment unlikely to change Russian adoption ban

A Kremlin spokesman said Thursday that a Russian-US adoption agreement would remain in force until year’s end, but earlier comments by the same official, as well as the Foreign Ministry, suggest this will do little if anything to lift a Russian adoption ban imposed on Americans late last year.

“The agreement is in force at the moment,” President Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told RIA Novosti, adding that “it will be in force over the course of the year.”

Late last month, however, Peskov told the Dozhd online TV channel that only those children whose adoptions had already been approved by binding court rulings would be allowed to join their adoptive families. Dozhd calculated that this would mean only six of 52 wards of the state in the process of being adopted by US parents would be able to leave Russia, while 46 would have to stay.

It has long been known that the bilateral agreement, in force since November and meant to facilitate adoptions of Russian children by US families, would formally expire only one year after either side bowed out of it.

According to US figures, more than 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families in the last 20 years, including 962 last year.

Russian officials complain they have not been granted access to monitor the wellbeing of adopted children and blame US adoptive parents for the deaths of at least 19 of them.

The new law is named for Dima Yakovlev (whose American name was Chase Harrison), a Russian toddler who died of heatstroke in 2008 after his American adoptive father left him in a car for hours.

A number of high-level Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have criticized the adoption ban. While the ban is the most controversial aspect of the new legislation, the law included other retaliatory measures as well, such as banning alleged US abusers of Russian citizens’ rights from entering Russia and freezing any assets they may have here.