Hooray for Mikhail Zurabov! Mikhail who, you ask?

Mikhail Zurabov is Russia's Minister for Health and Social Development, and on January 19, he announced that his family is going to adopt a second child. According to Russia's ITAR-Tass news service, the Zurabovs have two biological children and a two-year-old son, who was adopted.

Zurabov, who has taken quite a beating in the Russia press lately for his ideas on health and pension reforms, shied away from linking his family's decision to Russia's new law providing extra aid to Russians who adopt Russian children. And that's a shame: If Russia needs anything to jump-start domestic adoptions, it is the emergence of its own Dave Thomas.

Thomas, the founder of the Wendy's International fast-food chain, was adopted at birth. During his lifetime he was a quiet, but forceful advocate of adoption. In 1992, he created the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption to help foster children in the United States and Canada to find forever families. The Foundation works to educate both families and employers about adoption and to provide financial support to adoption professionals to help them do their jobs. And through it all, it follows a simple philosophy: Do what's best for the child.

Russia hasn't really had high-profile adoption advocates. Oil billionaire Roman Abramovich, the world's eleventh-richest man, was orphaned in childhood and reportedly spent time in his country's orphanages. I don't know if any orphans were helped during Abramovich's governorship of Chukotka, a remote region of northeast Russia, from 2000 to 2006. But like Thomas, Abramovich is a businessman, and so he might understand how to put philanthropy for orphans on solid financial footing.

(One note in passing: Olympic skating gold-medalist Oksana Baiul, who was born in Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union, was also orphaned as a child. Baiul is now a fundraiser for Tikva Children's Home Charity, which helps homeless, abandoned and abused Jewish children in her native Odessa. Kudos!)

Do what's best for the child, Dave Thomas said. I will be eternally grateful to Russia for doing the best for my children and helping them to find a forever family with me in America. But doing the best for the nearly 900,000 children in Russian orphanages can and should include domestic adoption. Bravo Mikhail Zurabov for putting that in focus.