Ordinarily, I do everything I can to avoid printing rumors about what is or isn't happening with adoptions in Russia. There's enough of that kind of stuff floating around on the Internet and an unconfirmed rumor is just that, an unconfirmed rumor. And unconfirmed rumors drive people nuts.

But I've gotten e-mails from several of you recently asking when I think the next round of accreditations will be issued. The truth is, I don't know and probably no one in Russia does either, with the possible exception of Andrei Alexandrovich Fursenko, the minister of education, whose signature has to be on every license that goes out.

There have been no accreditations issued since the one dated September 12 for Small World Adoption Foundation of Missouri. But that document may not truly reflect the slow pace of re-accreditations, since Small World would have been in one of the first batches of re-accreditations had its Moscow program director not died early this summer.

What is causing the delay now? Here's what I'm hearing, and working to confirm or disprove:

First, that the U.S. National Central Bureau of Interpol is not being as cooperative with the agency background checks as I reported on October 2. This one, folks, appears to be true. What I don't know is why a senior person in the adoption world was assured to the contrary, and I had hoped to nail that down before visiting this hornet's nest again. Suffice it to say that we will all be writing letters to our senators and congressional representatives soon to complain about USNCB.

Second, that the Ministry of Education is being reorganized. This supposedly won't affect the underlying rules of accreditation, but will sow more bureaucratic confusion. Russia certainly isn’t the only place in the world where who you know is as important as what you know, but adoption is a whole lot easier when you know the go-to official for every critical document.

Third, a junior official in the MoE who was empowered to sign off on certain documents is now not empowered to sign off on documents and the things he did sign off on will have to be redone. This may or may not be related to rumor number two.

Some of you will be angry that I wrote about any of this without having confirmation, and if you want to vent, please do so. I'm trying my best to get it all sorted out, and I hope to have answers soon.