All news

Russia ready for dialog with US on Dima Yakovlev Law — top lawmaker

The Russian top senator says the law "is not a goal in itself" and "the fate of children is the most important thing"

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. Russia is ready for a dialog with the United States on the Dima Yakovlev Law but the US should take some steps for that, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said on Wednesday.

"Everything can be changed back. But for its cancellation [the cancellation of the Dima Yakovlev Law], at least some steps from the United States are needed," the speaker of the upper house of Russia’s parliament said.

As the top senator said, this law "is not a goal in itself" and "the fate of children is the most important thing."

As the Russian top senator said, the Dima Yakovlev Law was adopted not because of the desire to annoy the US but because of numerous facts of the violation of the rights of adopted children and several lethal cases. Matviyenko said Russia was doing everything necessary to protect the interests of orphaned children.

The Russian top senator also said she considered as unfounded and far from international law a decision made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday on recognizing as illegitimate a ban on the adoption of Russian children under the so-called Dima Yakovlev Law.

Russia’s lawmakers passed the so-called Dima Yakovlev Law that took effect in January 2013 banning US citizens from adopting children in Russia. The legislation is named after a child from northwest Russia's Pskov region who died of heat stroke four months after being adopted by a US couple when his adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours.