MOSCOW, February 12 - RAPSI. The Russian government has approved a bill drafted by the Ministry of Education and Science to stimulate adoption in Russia, the governments press service said.

The ministry has proposed that a one-time payment of up to 100,000 rubles ($3,315) be approved for the adoptive parents of children with disabilities, brother and sister pairs, and children over seven.

The bill is to be submitted to the State Duma by March 1, 2013. The law could apply to as many as 100,000 orphans. Furthermore, the proposal includes simplifying the adoption procedure, in particular to extend the interim custody of orphans to six months. The procedure for collecting the necessary information would also be simplified, and the validity period of some medical certificates would be extended.

Orphans again became the subject of public discussion after the Dima Yakovlev law passed and came into force on January 1. The bill bans the US adoption of Russian children and was approved in response to the Magnitsky Act. It was unofficially named in memory of Dima Yakovlev, the two-year-old Russian boy who died after his US adoptive father left him in the car for nine hours, as well as in memory of all Russian children who were killed or abused by their adoptive families in the US.

While commenting on the ban, the Russian authorities also appealed for adoption process improvements at home.