Russian teen begs for adoption

• Tweet

MOSCOW, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- A Russian website has published an appeal from a 14-year-old boy who says the new adoption law has kept him from a U.S. couple.

Maxim Kargapoltsev on the site 1obl.ru begged President Vladimir Putin and the Duma, the lower house of parliament, to allow his adoption, RIA Novosti reported. He said he had been in touch with his would-be adoptive parents for seven years.

"I beg the State Duma and Vladimir Vladimirovich to approve this adoption," he reportedly said Wednesday.

The head of the orphanage in the Chelyabinsk region where the boy lives dismissed the story as a fake.

"It's not true. One news portal published that spoof story and it was copied all around without verification," Denis Matsko, told RIA Novosti. "Maxim didn't make any appeal either in oral or written form."

Putin signed a ban on U.S. adoptions Dec. 28, and it took effect Jan. 1. The law barred all adoptions, including those where U.S. families were already in the process.

While Putin and backers of the law in parliament said it was a response to the abuse of Russian adoptees, including some who have been killed, they also acknowledged the law was retaliation for the Serge Magnitsky Act. That bill, passed by the U.S. Congress last year, imposes sanctions on Russian officials found to have committed human rights abuses and is named after a Russian lawyer who died in police custody.