Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Russian orphans pay price for Putin’s new cold war

Toledo Blade

Many Russians are celebrating New Year’s Eve today. By the Julian calendar — still recognized by the Orthodox Church — it falls on Jan. 13.

Not celebrating are Russian orphans, particularly those with life-threatening illnesses. Many of them will die this year from lack of adequate care after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill that bans U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

There are at least 740,000 orphaned or abandoned children in Russia, by U.N. estimates. Many of them die of illness or commit suicide, news of which sometimes trickles even into the Kremlin-controlled media. About 1 percent of those children get adopted annually. About half of the adopted children used to go to foreign homes, mostly American.

Enter Mr. Putin, who signed the bill Jan. 1 — as a New Year gift to Russia’s corrupt bureaucracy.

Before he did that, he announced at a press conference in Moscow that the parliament had passed the ban in response to recent U.S. legislation — the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 it considers anti-Russian.

Named after a Russian lawyer who exposed a $230 million embezzlement by the Russian establishment and subsequently died in custody, it prohibits corrupt bureaucrats from getting U.S. visas and freezes their U.S. accounts.