One of the first things I did, when I went back to Sakhalin Island for my second trip, was take my little guy out shoe shopping. I had traced his feet on the first trip to the orphanage so I could buy shoes at home and bring them over, but it took me almost four months to get back there and I figured the tracings would be useless.

In a children's store in Yuzhno, we picked out a cute pair of yellow sneakers, and once they were on his feet there was no taking them off. Not even at the cash register. But I was unprepared for what... more

I put up this post the other day to dispel the notion that the Russian government has, somehow, acted deliberately to shut down adoptions. But I realized, in re-reading the item, that I didn't explain what is, and isn't, possible to do for a Russian adoption right now. So here goes:

1) Can I start a Russian adoption now? In a word: Yes. All the early paperwork takes place on our side of the globe, not Russia. So, spend some time ... more

OK, I figured I'd start with the most straightforward headline I could write and work out from there. Especially now that the smoke and steam has stopped pouring from my ears.

On Wednesday, I was up in Connecticut doing interviews for another project I am working on, and I picked up a copy of USA Today. "Russia curtails American adoptions" blared a front-page headline. What followed was a day of misery for many adoptive parents that could have been avoided by more informed reporting and a better choice of subject and verb in that headline.

Let's start with the title. The headline on... more

Adoption from Russia made the headlines this week and most of them were wrong. I'm going to come back to this issue later today, but for now, please know that Russia has not "curtailed" or "halted" adoption, or "suspended" foreign adoption groups.

One headline that wasn't: "Couple... more

There's a great idea floating around on some of the Russian adoption blogs, and if you haven't seen it yet, I want to bring it to your attention: A call for prayer on Sunday, April 15, that Russia will begin to issue re-accreditations.

In case you are new to the world of Russian adoption, Moscow has, since 2004, been thrashing out new rules. Things seem to move forward, then stop and another requirement gets added to the list. The changes are, as I... more

A lot of western companies announced investments in Russia this week, and there was one more bit of bad news on the adoption front: According to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, accreditations of all U.S. adoption agencies operating in Russia have expired.

Cisco announced on Tuesday that it is looking for opportunities to invest some venture capital in... more

I build most on my Friday news recap from mainstream media sources, in and out of Russia. But the Internet has opened news-gathering and opinion-offering to a wide range of other voices. Here are some interesting ones that I have discovered recently. This is not an endorsement, but merely an acknowledgement that reporting on Russia--and indeed any topic--now comes in many forms.

"La Russophobe" wears its opposition to President Vladimir Putin pretty openly, complete with a countdown counter to the end of his term. There are lots of links to other opposition blogs on the right side of the page.

"Scraps... more

It's amazing how putting a lower-case i in front of a word can infuse it with so much promise: Think iPod or iMac; now add iOrphan to the list.

iOrphan.com is California registered non-profit that is using the Internet to raise awareness--and funds for orphans and homeless children living in the countries of the former Soviet Union. As I've written before in my posts on ArkAngels and... more

The bidding for part of the failed Russian energy company Yukos went pretty much as expected on Tuesday. Rosneft, an energy company that is controlled by the Russian government, won with a lowball offer of $7.6 billion after the only other bidder, a joint venture that included Britain's BP, dropped out after just four minutes. One surprising... more

March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb and, this year, will end without the re-accreditation of adoption agencies working in Russia.

As many of you already know, last Thursday, March 22, Russia's Ministry of Education, which oversees the adoption process for both foreign and domestic adoptions, asked all foreign adoption agencies for additional paperwork. I've spent the last week trying to get some clarity on what happened, and I'm now ready to pass it on.

Many, many of us had hoped that March 30 would be the day on which the 55... more