By the end of 2025, Russian non-profit groups working on orphan care say the situation around placing children in families has continued to deteriorate. Amid war, repression, and a shift in the public agenda, orphanages, hospices, and other forms of social assistance receive far less attention, while many NGOs have lost public visibility and stable funding.
One such organization is the Institute for Family Placement Development, which supports foster and biological families, runs free foster-parent schools, and trains specialists. In its monthly report, the foundation said it had completed four groups of its foster-parent school, launched a free advanced training program for trainers, held 10 support groups for foster families, and provided about 150 consultations. Over that month, graduates of the program took six children into their families.
According to the organization, around 500,000 children in Russia have experienced orphanhood, more than 34,000 live in institutions, and for about 5,000 children each year guardianship duties are assigned to state guardianship authorities. NGOs also point to a shortage of foster-parent schools and trained specialists, the absence of a professional training system for the child-crisis sector, and weak coordination between agencies. About 10% of children are returned from substitute families to institutions every year.
Restrictions on international adoption have reinforced the trend. After the 2012 Dima Yakovlev law barred U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children, later restrictions extended to countries where gender transition is legal. According to the figures cited in the article, foreign adoptions fell from 529 cases in 2018–2019 to just 6 in 2023. In 2023, all representative offices of foreign NGOs working in adoption were closed, and children’s ombudsperson Maria Lvova-Belova said that in 2024 not a single Russian child was adopted by a family from abroad.
The article also cites data from the Ministry of Education and the outlet IStories: in 2024, Russian families took in only 76 out of every 100 children entering orphan institutions, described as the lowest level in 12 years. Only 40,000 new families were added to the database of prospective foster or adoptive parents, the lowest figure in 14 years. Returns also increased over the past decade: in 2013, 9 out of 100 adopted or fostered children were returned, compared with 16 out of 100 in 2024.
The text also links the issue of orphanhood to the war against Ukraine. It says hundreds of Ukrainian children were taken out of the country, and that according to the Ukrainian side at least 19,484 children were deported. It mentions that Sergey Mironov and Maria Lvova-Belova took part in high-profile adoptions of Ukrainian children, and that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Lvova-Belova.
“Even small but regular donations help us sustain and plan our work,” the Institute for Family Placement Development said in the report quoted by the author.
The article also includes individual stories. One concerns a family that took in a three-year-old boy after he had twice been rejected by adults. Another features foster mother Tatyana Kiseleva, who described adopting teenage brothers. The author presents these cases as evidence that, despite a systemic crisis, the work of specialized NGOs and proper training for foster parents still allows children to find families.