Adopted Child’s Death Inflames Russia-US Relations
Fred Weir says the Kremlin may be stoking anti-American sentiment. (Photo: Wiki Commons)
The media in Russia has been in a frenzy this week over the death of a young boy in Texas.
Max Shatto was 3-years-old when he died last month.
He was born Maxim Kuzmin, in Russia, and was adopted by an American couple before Moscow imposed a ban on such adoptions at the end of last year.
Russian officials allege Max was killed, and the press is calling for his brother — who was adopted by the same family — to be returned to Mother Russia.
The American ambassador to Russia Friday appealed to the media there to stop what he called the sensational exploitation of the case.
Fred Weir, the Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, says officials and the media “didn’t even wait for the facts.”
Weir says the case has inflamed anti-American passions in Russia to a pitch he’s “never seen in 27 years of living and working here.”