Administrator Flex: Parents participate in the placement of children

Russia has left the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) educational program, since, according to the Russian side, the United States violated obligations to return schoolchildren who arrived to study. This was announced by the authorized President of Russia for the Rights of the Child Pavel Astakhov.

According to him, one of the reasons is a gross violation by the US receiving party to the United States for an unconditional return to schoolchildren who arrived to study. Astakhov wrote about this on his microblog on Twitter. He added that in relation to one of the Russian students aimed at studying under the program in the United States, guardianship of US citizens was issued. In an interview with ITAR-TASS, Astakhov said that the couple who issued the guardianship was homosexual, and the child’s mother remained in Russia.

David Patton, an executive vice-president of the American Council for International Education in Washington, who leads the FLEX program, in a telephone interview with our radio station, commented on the statements of the Russian official that Russia refused to participate in the FLEX program after the Russian participant had not returned to Russia and was taken under the guardianship of a one-sex couple.

According to him, this custody was actually not a direct result of the FLEX program. “During the program, this was not a problem. This happened after the program was completed, and in this case we lost the opportunity to intervene in what was happening,” he said.

"According to the FLEX program, students are located in a wide variety of families reflecting, indeed, an American family landscape. And sometimes this includes lonely parents and sometimes even same -sex couples. Any unconventional placement is approved with the participation of both the program participant and his parents," David Patton said.

On Tuesday, the American ambassador in Moscow John Tefft expressed regrets about the closure of the Flex schoolchildren program between the United States and Russia.

Earlier it was reported that the US Embassy in Moscow was informed about the decision of the Government of the Russian Federation to cancel the participation of Russian schoolchildren in the FLEX program for 2015-2016, which was called the "largest program for educational exchange" between the two countries.

In connection with the refusal of Russia from the Flex program, its 2004 participant Ilya Klishin wrote in Snob.ru that, from the point of view of today's propaganda, Flex could not but be closed. "How is it? Young fragile minds go to the states to be seduced by bourgeois beauties and return here, not wanting to see enemies in the Americans. Moreover, they talk about it to others," he said.