Lawmakers in a Siberian coal-mining Kemerovo Region have passed the country’s first-ever ban on all adoptions of local children by foreign citizens.

      The legislative assembly of southwestern Kemerovo Region passed the law unanimously, citing concerns for child welfare. The law requires the governor’s approval to go into force. In his speech, one of the law's creators expressed his opinion that Russian children who move abroad face huge linguistic, cultural and religious barriers that drive them “into a corner” and hinder development say nothing of the abuse of adoptees.

      This year foreigners adopted  77 children from the Kemerovo Region, according to local government figures. There were about 6,500 orphans in the region at the beginning of the year.

      Russia’s federal government banned adoptions by Americans in late 2012 in the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, named after a Russian toddler who died of heatstroke after his American adoptive father left him in a parked car for nine hours in 2008.