MOSCOW — Russia’s Parliament on Wednesday gave overwhelming preliminary approval to a measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children, a harsh retaliatory move against US human rights legislation.
But the proposal appears to be too extreme for some senior Russian officials. The foreign minister and the education minister spoke out flatly against an adoption ban, and the speaker of the upper house of Parliament, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, suggested the lower house members were letting emotions overtake rationality.

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