“The adoption system slowed way down in recent years”.
I may be wrong but I believe it has a lot to do with the Hague Agreement. At least that is what our social worker told us. We were one of the last groups to have a reasonable wait time for China (2.5 years from start to finish). Our SW predicted Russia would cease adoptions as well. (she made this prediction about five years ago). We are one of the lucky ones, silverleaf.
No, our kids are the lucky ones and they make us lucky.
My DD is half Chinese BTW, she would have had no life in xenophobic racist Russia where race “mixing” is rejected