Update on Russia

Earlier today President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, gave the following statement regarding the recent ban on US adoptions in relation to the Russia-US Bilateral Agreement that went into effect on November 1, 2012: “The agreement is in force at the moment†and “it will be in force over the course of the year.†This leads us to believe that they will honor the bilateral agreement which stipulates that “the agreement is valid over one year beginning from the date one party informs the other via diplomatic channels about its intention to withdraw from the present agreement.â€

We do not yet know how this affects families in various stages of their adoption process. We are still awaiting clarification on which families will be permitted to finalize their adoptions throughout 2013. We continue to monitor this situation and await more news out of Russia.