US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul denied late Thursday that hundreds of Russian legislators may be blacklisted for US entry for supporting a ban on adoptions of Russian children by Americans."This is not our policy at the moment,” McFaul said in a Russian-language interview on Ekho Moskvy radio.
A US petition drive proposed in December to add Russian lawmakers who voted for the adoption ban to the so-called "Magnitsky list” of Russian officials banned from the United States over human rights violations. The petition gathered more than 25,000 signatures, which meant the White House was required by law to review it.
"We don’t want that,” McFaul said in the interview about the blanket blacklisting of Russian lawmakers. "On the contrary, we want more contacts between your and our lawmakers.”
"They need to see what America looks like. I’ve read some of the things your lawmakers said about America…that doesn’t reflect reality. So I want them to come [to America] more often, and not just to Washington – visit my California, that’s a different part of America,” McFaul was cited as saying.
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