State Duma Puts Vote on Hold Again

On January 26, the State Duma was scheduled to vote on bill No. 364094-5, which would prevent adoption of Russian children to foreigners whose countries do not have a bilateral adoption agreement with Russia. However, in what has become a repeating occurrence with this bill, the State Duma has decided to postpone the first vote on this bill to a later date.

This time, as happened once before, the postponement was made at the specific request of a State Member, as opposed to an administrative scheduling issue. The reasoning behind the specific request was not divulged in the bill's official record on the State Duma website.

No new date was provided. This same scenario happened last December; it took a couple of weeks for the bill to be rescheduled. I will continue to watch and will provide another update when the rescheduled vote is announced.