MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/. The number of underage orphans in Russia has reduced from 119 thousand to 92 thousand for the last two years, chairperson of Russian parliamentary lower house State Duma committee for labour and social policy Olga Batalina said on Sunday, adding that the decline is “very sharp,” “nothing like that has been observed since the early 2000s.”

The federal databank is annually “replenished with information about new children left without parental care,” the lawmaker said, noting that “therefore, for their numbers to go down those who were found [without parental care] in the course of the year and those who are already on the databank should be adopted in foster families.”

After the so-called Dima Yakovlev law was enacted, banning adoptions of Russian children to U.S. citizens and a presidential decree for the support to adoptions of underage orphans in Russia, the children’s adoption problem is being solved successfully in the country, Batalina also said.

For instance, around 63 thousand children, were adopted in Russian families in 2013, “1,488 children were adopted in foreign families, disabled children making 1,465 in 2013 were adopted more actively in Russian families, whereas only 68 disabled children were adopted in other countries,” the lawmaker said.

“International adoptions remain in effect, no one banned them, children are adopted in more than 16 countries,” Batalina noted. “But these kinds of adoptions do not play a major role in solving the problem of underage orphans,” the deputy added.