MOSCOW, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The adoption agreement between Russia and the United States remains valid until early January 2014, the President's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.
"The agreement is in force at the moment ... It will be in force over the course of the year," the RIA Novosti news agency quoted Peskov as saying.
According to the adoption document, the agreement is valid " over one year beginning from the date one party informs the other via diplomatic channels about its intention to withdraw from the present agreement," he said.
On Jan. 1, the Russian Foreign Ministry officially notified the U.S. embassy in Moscow that Russia was terminating the agreement.
The adoption ban, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 28, 2012, is part of Russia's response to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, established earlier in December. The act introduced sanctions against Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses and was named after Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow pre-trial detention center in 2009.
Peskov's statement came as Russian opposition planned to launch a "non-political" march on Sunday to repeal the "Anti-Magnitsky Act" and call for dissolution of the Russian State Duma.
It was not immediately clear whether the adoption of 46 Russian children by U.S. families currently underway will be allowed to proceed or prohibited.
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