has been more than six years since the Russian government passed the Dima Yakovlev Law, banning U.S. citizens from Russian children. The controversial measure was informally named after a Russian orphan who died of heat stroke after being left in a parked car by his American adoptive father
The number of children in the village of Shapy, in the Smolensk region of western Russia, was dwindling in the mid-2000s with the local school about to close. That’s when three teachers decided to adopt five children