NEWSLINK: Vladimir Putin gives big news conference in tough debate with journalists

File Photo of Vladimir Putin Speaking with Flag Behind Him and Microphones in Front

[Vladimir Putin gives big news conference in tough debate with journalists – ITAR-TASS – RUSSIAN PRESS REVIEW – December 21, 2012 – http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c142/606821.html]

Itar-Tass covers Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent marathon press conference.

Putin reportedly claimed he had not read a recent Duma bill banning U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans, and allowed that the Duma was responding emotionally to the Magnitsky Act, but also called the Duma action “adequate”:

The first expectable question asked during the news conference was that on a draft law banning adoptions of Russian children by American citizens, the Novye Izvestiya daily reported. The theme turned to be so burning that it was raised in different variations five more times. Journalists handed out to the president 100,000 signatures against this ban that they had collected and the lists of disabled children, whom U.S. families are ready to adopt. But every time Putin answered one and the same thing that he did not know the draft law’s wording, but at the same time confidently described the State Duma’s decision as adequate.

At the news conference he, in fact, approved the amendment banning adoptions of Russian children by U.S. citizens calling the State Duma’s reaction to the Magnitsky Act as an “emotional”, but “adequate” response, the Kommersant business daily reported. The main argument Putin provided was the fact that the Russian side has no opportunity to track the future of children adopted by U.S. families.

The newspaper drew attention to the fact that when asked whether he will sign the U.S. adoption ban or not Putin gave no direct reply.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly adopted a different public tone:

Despite the president’s position Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeatedly announced that he did not support the ban on adoption of Russian children by American citizens. “If we put a stop to adoption, that means one thing: that we will have to revoke the agreement on international adoption with the United States,” Lavrov told Euronews. “If we revoke it, we will no longer have any right legally to demand access to our children abroad. If only for that reason, I won’t react so strongly.”

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