Russia’s President Vladimir Putin vowed on Thursday to sign a bill banning Americans from adopting Russian children that has added new strains to the uneasy relations between the former Cold War foes.

An aide separately raised the spectre of the Kremlin eliminating all foreign adoptions as part of a patriotic drive to limit Russia’s dependence on others. The highly contentious bill is widely regarded as the toughest piece of anti-US legislation to reach Putin’s desk during his 13-year rule - a period that saw Moscow engage in repeated squabbles with the West over foreign policy and human rights.

“I do not yet see any reason why I should not sign it,” Putin told a meeting of top officials a day after the draft was unanimously approved by the upper house of parliament. “I intend not only to sign the law... but also a presidential decree on changing the way orphans are supported,” he said. Pro-Kremlin lawmakers put together the draft in a matter of days in response to a new US law sanctioning Russian officials implicated in the 2009 prison death of the whistleblowing attorney Sergei Magnitsky.

In addition, a separate measure targets Russia’s liberal activists by banning all domestic political organisations with funding from the United States. The two measures’ adoption was accompanied by virulently nationalistic rhetoric from lawmakers who accused rich Americans of buying Russian children and then abandoning them to horrible fates. Its passage also revealed cracks in the Russian leadership between those who would prefer to get tough with the United States and ministers who back a more cautious approach. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the cabinet’s social affairs chief Olga Golodets have both spoken out against it.