Many countries around the world allow gender reassignment surgery. As of 2020, there were 39 countries where it was prohibited. Russia joined the list in 2023.

However, the only people adopting Russian orphans in recent years have come from countries where gender reassignment is allowed. Five of the six foreign adoptions in 2023 were by Italian citizens and the other was by a family from France.

In the last 10 years, foreign adoptions in Russia have come to an almost complete halt. The number has been steadily decreasing ever since the Dima Yakovlev law, which specifically forbade Americans from adopting Russian children, came into force in 2013.

Foreigners adopted 1,052 Russian children in 2014, but that number had fallen to just 69 by 2021, with those children most frequently adopted by families from Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Israel.

An explanatory note to the bill says it was part of Russia’s far-reaching plan to protect children and adults from “non-traditional” values. It also refers to amendments to the Russian constitution adopted in 2020, which define the family as “a union between a man and a woman”.

The explanatory note says that a future “sex change” by one of the adoptive parents of a Russian child would jeopardise that child’s well-being. But, the “most terrifying” prospect, it continued, was the adoptive parents potentially “changing the sex” of the child.

‘It will wither away by itself’

This is not the first attempt by Russian politicians to place limits on the adoption of children by foreigners. Two years ago, State Duma deputies introduced another bill that, if passed, would have banned the adoption of Russians by citizens of “unfriendly” countries.

“There is a high probability of Russian children being harassed abroad, and discriminated against due to their ethnic background,” Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova said at the time.

That initiative is still under review, and was at least partially put on ice at the behest of the Education Ministry, which deals with matters relating to Russian orphans. It said that in view of the ongoing war in Ukraine, international adoption would wither away by itself, and a legal ban would only make it more difficult to monitor how children adopted from Russia were settling in abroad.

“If we withdraw from these agreements, we will lose what communication we do have with Russian children who have been given up for adoption,” Deputy Education Minister Andrey Korneyev said in January 2023.

Prior to that, Duma deputies had for years regularly come up with new restrictions that directly or indirectly complicated the process of foreign adoption. In 2014, the Russian authorities banned adoption by same-sex couples and unmarried citizens from countries where same-sex unions had legal recognition.

The following year, Russia updated and tightened the requirements for international agencies facilitating the adoption of Russian children. These organisations effectively ceased operating in 2023.

In June 2023, Italian NGO CIFA, one of whose areas of action was international adoption, received an official request from the Russian authorities to cease operations in the country until at least 2027.

According to CIFA, the official reason was that Russia was no longer able to monitor the wellbeing of children who had been adopted when there was almost no contact between the countries.

“Unfortunately, we had to close our office in Moscow,” CIFA employees told Novaya Europe. “We would very much like to continue helping children in Russia, but at the moment it’s not possible.”

CIFA had been helping families in Italy adopt children from abroad, including from Russia, for years before the closure. In Russia, the adoption process took anywhere from several months to several years, depending on the availability of a child, how fast the authorities worked and the involvement of the future parents.

In accordance with Russian law, a child’s data must be kept on an orphan database for 12 months before they can be put up for foreign adoption. If no parents are found within Russia in that period, the child then becomes eligible for adoption overseas.

‘Every child has the right to a mum and a dad’

It was difficult for foreigners to adopt a child from Russia even before the current round of restrictions was introduced. Manuella from Milan told Novaya Europe that it took her and her husband two years to bring Ksenia* and Ivan* from Russia to Italy in 2013.

Initially, Manuella hadn’t just been considering adoption overseas, but that option turned out to be faster due to peculiarities of Italian law. The family had to visit Russia three times to provide paperwork to the authorities, meet the children and attend court to regulate formalities.

Ivan was seven and his sister Ksenia was two when Manuella and her husband adopted them. Russian law insists that biological brothers and sisters are adopted together, which Manuella thinks is absolutely correct. She says the children felt well integrated within months of arriving in Italy. They learned the language quickly, and Ivan went to the local school almost immediately.

“It is profoundly unfair to deprive children of the chance to have a family and grow up happy, as our own children do,” Manuella says. “Every child has the right to a mum and dad who will support them as they develop and help them grow. When I think about my children and how different their lives would have been if we had not become a family, I also realise how much they have enriched our lives and how we have helped them achieve success in life.”

History will be the judge

Overseas adoption is on the decline around the world for a number of reasons. In 2005, about 46,000 children around the world found a new home in a new country. Ten years later, that number had fallen to 12,000 and is still falling. The availability of contraception and rising living standards are just two factors contributing to why there are now fewer orphans in the world.

In Russia, it is clear that the sharp fall is primarily due to the Dima Yakovlev law. According to open data platform To Be Precise, about a third of Russia’s adopted children went to foreigners before the law change in 2013. In 2021, the number of foreign adoptions had fallen to 3% of the total.

The law most affected children with disabilities and chronic diseases, as Russians are much less willing to adopt these children.

Yet despite the bans and restrictions, the situation surrounding adoption in Russia is improving, a charity employee told Novaya Europe, insisting on anonymity.

“In recent years, Russian families have actively begun adopting children with disabilities. There’s been a real change in society in that regard,” she says. “However, if we say that the constitution guarantees all citizens rights, then the Dima Yakovlev law has, of course, infringed on the rights of Russian children. Previously, children had the right to be adopted abroad if nobody in Russia would take them. Now they don’t. How tragic is that change? History will be the judge.”

*Names changed.