What a great way to end the week: Five more U.S. adoption agencies have been accredited by the Russian government. The July 19 round of accreditations also included one agency each in Israel, Spain and France.

The American agencies are Pittsburgh-based Adopt-A-Child, Adoption Associates in Jennison, Mich., European Adoption Consultants of Strongsville, Ohio, Rhode Island-based Gift... more

The English-language news channel Russia Today put up an interesting piece this morning on an orphanage in Moscow devoted to children with HIV and AIDS.

In case you are not familiar with Russia Today, it is an offshoot of the RIA-Novosti news agency. Like its parent organization, it covers breaking news, politics, business and human interest stories in Russia and other Eastern European and Central Asia countries. It also is taking full advantage of the Internet: It recently established its own channel on... more

Where is it? Novosibirsk Oblast is located, as you might have guessed from the name, in western Siberia. It is bordered by Omsk and Tomsk oblasts, Kemerovo Oblast and Altai Krai. Kazahkstan is just to the south. The Ob River cuts through the region. Though it is small, the economic importance of its largest city has merited the Novosibirsk region its own time zone, and you can find the local time here.

What's... more

Fifteen years ago, two professors from the University of Pittsburgh were invited to go to Russia by city government officials in St. Petersburg. The Soviet Union had dissolved, and with it, a lot of government support for child welfare initiatives. What policies, what services should we put in place, the city fathers asked the academics?

But while Robert McCall and Christina Groark, respectively a professor... more

It seems as if more accreditations are on the horizon.

European Adoption Consultants has a note on its Russia program page dated July 11, 2007 that says that it is expecting its accreditation "in the next few days". This would be quite interesting because EAC says on its Web site that it only submitted its accreditation papers to the Ministry of Education on March 6 of this year, well after some of the other agencies that are waiting for accreditation decrees.

There is nothing yet on EAC's accreditation on either the Web site that the Ministry... more

The big media outlets slowly woke up to the accreditation news this week. There was this story in USA Today and another in the Chicago Tribune, and even a brief notice in the Moscow Times. The New York Times didn't weigh in, but it did have a nice... more

Five years. By some measures, that's not a very long time. It took 185 years to build Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, for example.

But right now, in the context of adoption from Russia, five years looks almost like eternity. That's because the new accreditations that were announced last week --the first of what will hopefully be several dozen before long--are good for five years.

Five years.

What an enormous weight that is lifted off the agencies' shoulders. They can program and plan, and give parents a timeline for their adoption... more

I wrote last week that eight American agencies had been accredited by the Russian government to handle adoptions. I was wrong--and right.

Let me explain.

As you can now see at the top of the Web site for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, seven agencies were accredited. They are Catholic Social Services of the Diocese of Charlotte, Children's Home Society & Family Services, ... more

Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a front-page piece on Nashi, a Russian youth movement that supports President Vladimir Putin.

It's not the first Western news organization to take a look at the group. Newsweek had a profile less than a month ago. The BBC had a story last summer, and both the text and an accompanying video are still available on its Web site. Blogs... more

What with the need for a trip one, trip two, packing, regional pointers and the like, there's always a lot of talk about travel on the Russia Adoption forum board. But a new thread popped up last week with a fun idea: Travel to Russia to see the 2014 Winter Olympic Games and take the kids along.

As you may have seen in the news last week, on July 4 Russia won its... more