Ball in your court, Vlad

The Russians are learning to fight back against their politicians;

A blind Russian high-schooler's impassioned criticism of the ban on adoption by Americans has added a new and compelling voice to the chorus of condemnation of the law.

Since her Jan. 6 blog entry complaining about the ban, written as an open letter to President Vladimir Putin, Natasha Pisarenko has attracted the wide attention of Russian media and, she fears, drawn the disapproving notice of authorities.

At least Americans have health care! (she says); 

Pisarenko wrote sarcastically that by signing the law, Putin was "saving children from American evil" and said that Russians rarely adopt disabled children because the country's medical system is backward and can't take care of them.

"They die because Russia doesn't have modern medicine," she wrote.

Pisarenko, blind from birth, writes that she has painful personal experience with Russia's medical inadequacy. She says that although her father detected her blindness within days of her birth, Russian doctors were unable to diagnose it for months. But, she says, she received precise diagnosis and the hope of treatment from German and American doctors.

"For Russian doctors, I am a child with an illness of unknown etiology ... but in Germany and America I am a patient whose sight the doctors are trying to restore," she wrote.

Though old fears linger; 

...she expressed worry that her letter would cause her parents to be called in for questioning by regional authorities.
...."Probably, I will regret that I wrote what I think," Natasha wrote in her blog on Saturday.