State Duma Speaker regards Russian adoption laws simplified enough

Russia has no reasons to revise the Dima Yakovlev bill, Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin told a press conference at Itar-Tass on Thursday. "We should bring up our children ourselves," the speaker said in reply to a question about the bill which bans the adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens. Vice-speaker Lyudmila Shvetsova said that the bill in the final version took into account many positive and constructive things which were suggested during public debates on the bill in Russia. "All the accounting documents which a child's foster parents and custodians ought to have submitted have been abolished," she said. The Family Code envisages free certification, a bigger lump sum paid to foster parents, which was increased from 13,000 to 100,000 roubles when children older than seven years old or incapacitated children and their brothers and sisters are adopted, Shvetsova said. The bill says that raising children at orphanages is a temporary measure, the vice-speaker said.