Outrage as Adopted Russian Child is Abandoned by American Mother at Airport

The boy, Artem Saveliev, was put on a plane by his adopted grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville.

In a case that has caused outrage at the highest levels, Torry Ann Hansen packed off Artem with a note to Moscow officials saying 'I no longer wish to parent this child'.

The single mother even paid an associate to take the boy straight to the ministry of education on his arrival at Moscow airport.

Both the Kremlin and the U.S. ambassador have expressed their shock at Artem's plight and there is now a diplomatic dispute over his future.

Miss Hansen, from Shelbyville, Tennessee, chose Artem from an orphanage in eastern Russia last September.

Staff said the thirty-four-year-old nurse had convinced them and a Russian court that she would provide a proper home, even without a husband.

Seven months later - and a week before Artem's eighth birthday - she decided she had had enough because of his 'violent and psychopathic' behavior.

Packing sweets, biscuits and coloring pens for his journey, Miss Hansen allegedly told Artem he was going on a holiday.

Claiming that the orphanage had lied, she said in her letter: 'After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.

'As he is a Russian national, I am returning him to your guardianship and would like the adoption annulled.

'He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behavior. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability.

'They chose to grossly misrepresent those problems in order to get him out of their orphanage.'

But Pavel Astakhov, the Kremlin's children's rights commissioner, said: 'If his American parent kicked him out from the country on a plane like a sack of potatoes, then we will look after the boy.

'Our care system will take up the case. After a full medical examination, he will be placed in one of our orphanages.'

John Beyrle, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, said he was deeply shocked and very angry that any family could act so callously.

But the case has sparked a diplomatic tug-of-war over who should lay claim to the boy.

Mr. Astakhov, who yesterday spoke to Artem at the Moscow hospital where he is being looked after, said U.S. officials had been there to demand custody.

He added: 'They had a conversation with the guards, threatening, and saying that they will make the hospital administration responsible for not letting them take an American citizen.'

Russia last night threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families folowing the row over the return of the seven-year-old boy by a woman from Tennessee.

The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption - the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency - for the duration of an investigation.

Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families.

Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States, and more than 60,000 Russian orphans have been successfully adopted there, according to the National Council For Adoption, a U.S. adoption advocacy nonprofit group.

Moscow officials claim there have been 17 deaths in suspicious circumstances of Russian children adopted by Americans since 1991.