Russia outlaws U.S. adoptions
Putin inked the ban, retaliating for an earlier American effort to promote human rights.
MOSCOW - President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday signed a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, abruptly terminating the prospects for more than 50 youngsters preparing to join new families.
The move is part of a harsh response to a U.S. law targeting Russians deemed to be human-rights violators. Although some top Russian officials including the foreign minister openly opposed the bill, Putin signed it less than 24 hours after receiving it from Parliament, where it passed both houses overwhelmingly.
The law also calls for the closure of nongovernmental organizations receiving American funding if their activities are classified as political - a broad definition many fear could be used to close any NGO that offends the Kremlin.
The law takes effect Jan. 1, the Kremlin said. Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said 52 children who were in the pipeline for U.S. adoption would remain in Russia.
The human-rights measure President Obama signed into law this month stems from the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud. He was repeatedly denied medical treatment and died in jail in 2009. Russian rights groups claimed he was severely beaten.
The adoption ban has angered both Americans and Russians who argue it victimizes children to make a political point, cutting off a route out of frequently dismal orphanages for thousands.
"The king is Herod," popular writer Oleg Shargunov said on his Twitter account, referring to the Roman-appointed king of Judea at the time of Jesus Christ's birth, who the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish children to avoid being supplanted by a prophesied newborn king of the Jews.
A painting depicting the massacre and captioned "an appropriate response to the Magnitsky act" spread widely on the Internet. The phrase echoed Putin's characterization of the ban while it was under consideration.
U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell expressed regret over Putin's signing the law and urged Russia to "allow those children who have already met and bonded with their future parents to finish the necessary legal procedures so that they can join their families."
Vladimir Lukin, head of the Russian Human Rights Commission and a former ambassador to Washington, said he would challenge the law in the Constitutional Court.