ST. PETERSBURG, April 1. /TASS/. Mora than 200 orphan children from Donbass may be adopted into families in Russia in the near future, Russian children’s rights ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova said on Friday.
"As many as 1,560 children left without parents have arrived in Russia. Some of them arrived with their guardians. It means that these parentless children have foster parents. There are around 500 such children. The rest are children from child care homes. A total of 222 of them have the entire package of documents and can be adopted into families," she said, adding that the list of potential foster families has already been drawn.
"There are 830 such families and 300 of them have the experience of adopting children," she said. "We understand that it should be a professional approach rather than an emotional impulse because along with the trauma of losing parents these children have war-time traumas and foster parents, who have the experience of taking care of adopted children, would be more preferable," she said.
According to the ombudswoman, additional work will be need with the rest of parentless children from Donbass because they have problems with documents. "Some were fleeing in haste and could not take documents with them and it is now difficult to have them re-issued. Some have relatives, some were in a process of withdrawal of parental rights, i.e. their status is not yet clear," Lvova-Belova explained.