A Russian Orphan Addresses Putin: Authorities Say He Was Provoked

Russian officials denounced a provocation and “shameful manipulation” Thursday after the media confirmed that a 14-year-old orphan, suffering from a genetic condition, wrote to Vladimir Putin asking the Russian president to permit an American family to adopt him.

Local media reported that Maxime Kargopoltsev, who lives at a boarding school in Chelyabinsk, an industrial city in the Urals, wrote to the president and to the Russian deputies asking that they reverse the ban on Americans adopting Russian children.

According to the website of local television station Pervy Oblastnoi,” the boy asked the Duma (the lower house of Parliament) and Vladimir Putin to authorize the adoption.

The story of the boy’s call aroused emotions, especially on the Internet, when Vladimir Putin announced at the end of December a law banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans, in a type of move toward the enemy not seen since the end of the Cold War.

One of the authors of the controversial law, congresswoman Ekaterina Lahkova of the ruling party United Russia, denounced the provocation, three days after protestors of the law gathered Sunday in Moscow.

The protestors have also demanded the dissolution of the Duma, for which the oppositional newspaper Novaya Gazeta was able to gather 100,000 signatures of support.

“It is obvious that the boy did not do this without the help of adults (…) All of this is done with the help of adults. This will be a new excuse to be indignant, to launch more attacks against Russia,” said Ms. Lakhova, former president of the Committee for Family Affairs, to the public agency RIA Novosti.

The Kremlin delegate for child rights, Pavel Astakhov, denounced it on Twitter as a “shameful manipulation.”

The spokesman of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, said from his side that the Kremlin has received “no letter.”

The site of the popular daily Komsomolskaya Pravda had a journalist visit the boarding school in Chelyabinsk and posted an interview with the boy and the institution’s director, accompanied by a video.

In this recording, the boy, who did not give the impression of speaking under duress, denies having written a letter but confirms that he responded to the question by local media on the subject in late December.

“The journalist asked me: if you had the opportunity to speak to Putin, what would you say to him? I told him briefly that I wished to go to the United States, that I have people there (adoptive parents, etc.). There was no letter, mail, anything like that,” said the boy.

The human rights delegate for the Chelyabinsk region, Margarita Pavlova, indicated, however, that she was aware of the boy’s intention to address Russian and American authorities.

“He had this idea: first write to Obama, then to Putin,” she told the radio station Business FM, but added that she never saw “neither one nor the other letter.”

“He has a genetic disease; growth problems.The American family could pay for his treatment without a problem. They have already found a clinic to treat Maxime,” said Pavlova.

The radio station Echo of Moscow has posted a blog with photos of Maxime and his American “family,” the Wallens from Virginia, who he has known since he was seven and who have already filed an application for his adoption.

Adopted in response to a U.S. law punishing those Russian officials responsible for the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail, the Russian law prohibits adoptions by Americans and has provoked many reactions in Russia and around the world.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Vladimir Putin, stated, however, that an agreement between the United States and Russia on adoptions was already in place and that it would remain so until January 2014.

“The agreement is currently in force,” said Peskov, as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency. However, it was impossible to know whether the procedures currently in place for the adoption of Russian children by Americans would continue or not.

Mr. Peskov could not be reached for questioning on this point.

The United Nations Children’s Fund has called for the Russian government to pay attention to “the present distress of many Russian children living in orphanages.”

According to figures from UNICEF, 130,000 children were living in Russian institutions in 2009.

Between 2008 and 2011, 15,000 Russian children were adopted by foreigners, including 5,000 by Americans, compared to 33,000 by Russians, according to official figures.