MOSCOW, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Russia expects U.S. authorities to punish an adoptive mother of a Russia-born boy who died due to her criminal negligence, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday.
"We proceed from the fact that those guilty will be punished most severely. We will follow the investigation closely," the ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and supremacy of law, Konstantin Dolgov, said in an online comment.
Meanwhile, the envoy added that "the U.S. State Department, unlike the local authorities, has not helped our consulate representatives to find out the reason for another lethal case with a Russian child in the U.S.."
According to the ministry, three-year-old boy Maxim Kuzmin died on Jan. 21 due to abuse by his adoptive mother. It is alleged that she had regularly given him strong psychotropic drugs and had beaten him to death.
This is the 20th death of Russian children in U.S. foster families since 1996, according to a count.
Earlier February, Washington agreed to cooperate with Moscow in investigating abuse of adopted Russian children in the U.S..
On Feb. 9, President Vladimir Putin said Russian orphans should be adopted in their homeland.
The conditions for Russian children in U.S. families became a hot issue at the end of 2012 when Moscow passed the Dima Yakovlev Act, or the so-called Anti-Magnitsky Act.
The act banned Americans from adopting Russian orphans in a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. Magnitsky Act.
The U.S. act, passed in December, introduced a blacklist of Russian officials allegedly linked to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky at a Russian prison in 2009.
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