President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Friday that bans Americans from adopting Russian children and imposes other measures in retaliation for new U.S. legislation meant to punish Russian human rights abusers.

The law, which has ignited outrage among Russian liberals and children's rights advocates, enters into force on Jan. 1 and is likely to strain U.S.-Russia relations.

As well as banning U.S. adoptions, it will also outlaw some non-governmental organizations that receive U.S. funding and impose a visa ban and asset freeze on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians abroad.

The law could block dozens of Russian children expected to be adopted by American families from leaving the country and cut off one of the main international routes for Russian children to leave orphanages that are often dismal. Russia is the single biggest source of adopted children in the United States, with more than 60,000 Russian children being taken in by Americans over the past two decades.

The bill is retaliation for an American law that calls for sanctions against Russians deemed to be human rights violators and part of an increasingly confrontational stance by the Kremlin against the West.

Related: Americans may lose right to adopt Russian children

Putin said U.S. authorities routinely let Americans suspected of violence toward Russian adoptees go unpunished — a clear reference to Dima Yakovlev, a Russian toddler for whom the bill is named. The child was adopted by Americans and then died in 2008 after his father left him in a car in broiling heat for hours. The father was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov on Wednesday said that 46 children who were about to be adopted in the United States would remain in Russia if the bill came into effect. On Thursday, he petitioned the president to extend the ban to other countries.

Courtesy Thomas family

John and Renee Thomas with their son, Jack, 7, who was adopted from Russia at the age of 3. Jack is hoping for his brother, Nikoly, now in a Russian orphanage, to join him in the United States.

Would-be adoptive parents in the United States are left hanging by Putin's signing of the bill, which was passed by Russian lawmakers last week.

Among them are John and Renee Thomas of Minnetonka, Minn., Kari Huus of NBC News reported. The Thomases have already adopted Jack, 7, from Russia. When they found out he had a little brother, they began the process to try to adopt him, too. The wait has stretched to four years, and now the adoption may be in danger. 

"When Jack is asked about his family, he talks about his brother," John Thomas said. "He always asks, 'When is he coming home?' We just tell him we’re waiting for the call."

More: Adoption of little brother caught in US-Russia spat

UNICEF estimates that there are about 740,000 children without parental custody in Russia, while only 18,000 Russians are now waiting to adopt a child.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday repeated its opposition to the Russian measure.

"The welfare of children is simply too important to tie to the political aspects of our relationship," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. "Additionally, we are deeply troubled by the provisions in the bill that would restrict the ability of Russian civil society organizations to work with American partners."  

Critics of the bill left dozens of stuffed toys and candles outside the parliament's lower and upper houses to express solidarity with Russian orphans. 

An online petition urging the Kremlin to scrap the bill garnered more than 100,000 Russian signatures. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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By Atia Abawi, NBC News correspondent

Betty Tisdale, 89, is on a mission to help children around the world.

“I feel that there is nothing impossible to do.  And a war isn’t going to stop me,” Tisdale said adamantly, sitting in the nursery she helped open in Afghanistan’s capital.

In June, Tisdale, who lives in Seattle, took her third trip to  Afghanistan where her grassroots organization Helping And Loving Orphans (HALO), is helping some of the country’s most vulnerable.  Partnered with a non-governmental organization, PARSA, they support the House of Flowers Orphanage in Kabul.

On this trip, Tisdale’s main mission was babies.  The money she brought in from donors, including third graders near Seattle who raised $1,354, was to open Afghanistan’s first-ever licensed nursery.

“I want to be able to help them,” she said.  “It could be the beginning of something really special in Afghanistan.”

When Tisdale was a young girl her mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis and placed in a sanitarium.  Later, her father died when she was only 9 years old.  Relatives stepped in to raise her after she and her siblings were split up.

“I’m not dwelling on that,” she told NBC News, in high spirits as she explained why she chooses to assist orphans in foreign countries. 

“Orphans overseas don’t always get adopted. And they don’t have a foster home to go to in the next  two years,” she said.  “What they need most is that feeling of being loved for who they are, not because they are an orphan.”

So Tisdale is providing love everywhere she can, and has been doing it since 1961.

She organized  the baby lift in 1975, just days before the fall of Saigon and the end to the Vietnam War.  Tisdale helped evacuate 219 Vietnamese orphans, brought them to the United States and found them all homes within a month.

Since then she has opened orphanages throughout the world including in Vietnam, Mexico, Haiti, Nepal and Colombia.

And when asked how she is able to sponsor all these projects, her answer was simple:  “I’m a great beggar.  I really am.”

We didn’t see her beg on the Afghan streets but we did see her in action bargaining at the baby shops in Kabul.  And she’s definitely not afraid to tug on some heartstrings. 

“These babies have no mother, no father,” she would say, leaning over the counter as she spoke to the store clerks. To help orphans in many countries, every penny counts.

Some of the clerks were so moved by Tisdale’s story they told her they would speak to their storeowners to donate supplies to the nursery for the Muslim religious obligation of zakat, helping those less fortunate.

Tisdale has many reasons for helping these orphans and one of them is to help Afghanistan gain bright leaders that can one day save a nation in turmoil.

“These kids will never go to war, they’re going to be too smart for it,” she said.

Those she works with gave us a more ominous reason for why more Americans should care about Afghan children.

“Although our politicians say Osama bin Laden is gone, what created Osama bin Laden is not gone at all,” Marnie Gustavson, Executive Director of PARSA, told NBC News.

As for Tisdale, she promises to come back to Afghanistan next year to check the progress of the nursery and orphanage.  She said she would continue to come every year, even after American troops withdraw.

"If you get to know the people, you get to know the children, how can you just say, 'Okay the war is over.'" she said. "I'm not here because of the war anyhow."