{"id":81278,"date":"2022-03-25T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-25T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81278"},"modified":"2022-03-25T08:49:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-25T13:49:51","slug":"there-but-for-the-grace-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81278","title":{"rendered":"There but for the grace of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This Thursday piece in the Washington Post<\/a> caught my eye for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, but it is illustrative of how when war is unleashed, the shrapnel goes in all directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Minnesota classroom, two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, a high school teacher asked her class where they would travel if they could go anywhere in the world. Barrett Buck, 16, who was adopted from Moscow at 15 months old, began replying, \u201cRussia, because \u2014\u201d A scoff cut her off before she could finish the sentence.<\/p>

Buck continued, saying she\u2019d like to experience more of the country of her birth. Then she added, \u201cI don\u2019t support Russia and what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>

Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine has complicated the lives of kids like Buck, one of tens of thousands of children adopted from Russia in the 1990s and early 2000s, and their families, as they navigate layers of feelings about their Russian identity amid the backdrop of an unprovoked war.<\/p>

Mara Kamen, chair of Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption (FRUA), a volunteer-run organization shepherding a network of about 7,000 member families who have adopted children from the former Soviet bloc, says kids and teens adopted from Russia have felt intense hurt these past few weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My son and daughter are both adopted from Russia, though at different times and from different places. We made a total of four trips to Russia, two for each of them. With our son, our first day with him in the orphanage was 9\/11. With our daughter, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 started the day after we got to Moscow (which, looking at the calendar, within the last week was exactly nineteen years ago.) I might share those stories at some point down the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n


Our kids are among the 60,000 mentioned here, but they will be among the last for awhile. Putin ended foreign adoptions in 2013. A very sad case involving a Russian adopted boy was the purported reason, but it had more to do with politics and Putin’s anger at sanctions for human rights abuses. Also, there was always a bit of wounded pride on the part of the Russian people, to have Americans come in and take care of their children in a way they couldn’t, or wouldn’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 60,000 Russian children were adopted by American families between 1992 and 2012, according to figures from the U.S. State Department. The Dima Yakovlev Law, signed by Putin in December 2012, took effect in 2013 and banned the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens, meaning most children adopted from Russia and living in the United States are now teens and young adults.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What really resonated with me though was this part of the article, because I’ve been having the same emotions watching the invasion of Ukraine unfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Kary Lawrence of Rockville, Md., speaks of seeing photos of young Russian soldiers in Ukraine, she begins to cry. Several of the soldiers appeared to be about the same age as her own sons, Nicholas Lawrence, 19, and Dmitri Lawrence, 18, whom she and her husband adopted from Russia.<\/p>

“They\u2019re very young. They\u2019re like my boys,” says Lawrence, 58. “To me, thinking they could\u2019ve been there, it makes me sad that there are other kids born around the same time being thrown into this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


My son will be 22 this year and he truly could’ve been among the Russian solders told to go into Ukraine. The prospects for orphanage kids in Russia are not always bright once they age out of the system. Substance abuse can afflict both but for girls, it is not uncommon to end up in prostitution or to be trafficked. For boys, often the military is their only option.

There have been reports that the Russian soldiers are demoralized<\/a>, not told where they were going or why<\/a>, that they are poorly supplied and poorly fed<\/a>. It’s easy to dismiss them as “conscripts”, but some of these soldiers are just kids who needed a way to eat and have a roof over their head.

Putin made a grave strategic error by going into Ukraine, and Napoleon told us to never interrupt the enemy while he’s making a mistake. Kevin Williamson wrote this week<\/a> that Putin should be made to pay dearly for what he’s done, and I want that too.

It’s just that the process of doing so involves killing Russian soldiers, many of whom had a rough start in life already and who didn’t want to be involved in the destruction of Ukraine. Soldiers who could’ve been my son, young men who certainly are quite like my son, and the thought of that saddens me.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Thursday piece in the Washington Post caught my eye for reasons I’ll explain in a moment, but it is illustrative of how when war is unleashed, the shrapnel goes in all directions. In a Minnesota classroom, two weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, a high school teacher asked her class where they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/273926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81278"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81310,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81278\/revisions\/81310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}