Kremlin Doubts Doctors’ Adoption Plea Letter

MOSCOW, May 3 (RIA Novosti) – The Kremlin said on Friday it doubted the veracity of a letter published on the internet, said to have been sent to President Vladimir Putin by a group of doctors, asking him to allow adoptions of Russian children which have already started to go ahead, in spite of a new law banning adoptions of Russian children by Americans.

The letter, published on social networking sites and dated April 12, is apparently countersigned by dozens of doctors including leading child psychologists. The authors say it is impermissible to stop the adoptions in cases where foster children have already met their would-be parents, as they would feel they have once again lost their parents, causing them further psychological damage.

“He (Putin) knows nothing about this letter, as its source is a social network,” said Presidential press spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “So therefore we cannot judge its authenticity,” he told Russian radio.

Russia passed the so-called “Dima Yakovlev” law in January 2013, banning adoption of Russian children by American parents. Dima Yakovlev was a Russian boy adopted by an American family who died in July 2008 after his father, Miles Harrison, left him in a locked car, causing Dima to die of heat exhaustion.

The law was seen by many as Russian retaliation for the passage of the so-called Magnitsky Act in the US, which imposed sanctions on Russian officials said by the US to have been implicated in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow prison in 2009.

 

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