I don’t know if your adoption agency has alerted you to this, but there was a very important Russian visitor in the United States two weeks ago: Alina Levitskaya.

Ms. Levitskaya's official title is Director of the Department of Youth Policy, Upbringing and Social Protection of Children of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. Which means she is in the inner circle as the Ministry of Education rounds up Russian government input on the re-accreditation of foreign adoption agencies.

According to The National Council for Adoption, which met with Ms. Levitskaya, she had come to New York on other matters, but scheduled a side trip to Washington to talk adoption at the U.S. State Department. It hasn't responded to my call for information about who she talked to there or what was on the agenda, but perhaps not coincidently, it was on April 25, the day of her visit, that State issued this oddly worded statement about its interest in adoptions from Russia.

NCFA President and Chief Executive Thomas Atwood and two staffers met with Ms. Levitskaya the following day. And according to Lee Allen, who was at that meeting, she offered reassurances about the re-accreditation process. Ms. Levitskaya told the NCFA that 75 foreign adoption agencies have applied for re-accreditation, of which 43 were American. (I don't know why this doesn't square more neatly with the fact that 59 U.S. adoption agencies had NGO status as of mid-April, but it doesn't.) She said that the American applications have been released from the Ministry of Education and are now moving through the four other ministries involved in the accreditation process: the Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

According to the NCFA, Ms. Levitskaya expects several agencies to receive renewal of their accreditation in the "imminent future". She told the NCFA the delays were "paperwork delays" and not the result of any anti-American sentiment.

Good news? I hope. Ms. Levitskaya has spoken out about a need to end independent adoptions--that is, adoptions conducted without a supervising, duly vetted adoption agency. But she also seems to recognize that Russia's orphanages are under stress now from the slowdown in adoptions. I would be happier if she had given the NCFA a firm timetable for the issuance of the re-accreditations, but "imminent" is a good word to hear from Russia.