VLADIVOSTOK, November 1. /TASS/. Russia’s child ombudsman, Anna Kuznetsova, said on Wednesday it was too early to speak about lifting the ban on US adoptions of Russian children, also known as the Dima Yakovlev Law.
"The issue [of renewing adoptions] has been raised on many occasions, and it will be dealt with only when the foreign side, the United States, starts granting our requests for information about the fate of adopted children. We really have no idea of what is going on with our children there," she told reporters during her visit to the Russian Far Eastern city of Vladivostok.
She said that Russia was able to reverse the situation with domestic adoptions, as the number of would-be adoptive parents has tripled in recent years.
"We need to grant all applications from Russian citizens first," she said.
The Russian-US agreement on adoption cooperation was officially canceled on January 1, 2014, after a number of Russian children had died in adoptive US families. On January 1, 2013, the so-called Dima Yakovlev’s Law, banning US citizens from adopting Russian children, entered into force. It was named after Dima Yakovlev, who died in 2008, three months after he had been adopted by US citizens.