Some of the bleakest conditions described in the Human Rights Watch report were in institutions for children with disabilities.
Such children face huge cultural and financial disadvantages, as do those parents who struggle to raise them outside the orphanage system, according to Mr Derek Farrell and his Siberian-born wife, Mrs Olga Pavlova-Farrell, who have been working with disabled children in Russia for some years.
Mr Farrell, who is chief executive of the Disabled Drivers' Association in Ireland and vice-chairman of the Brussels-based Mobility International, is well versed in the bleak situation in Russia. "Sadly, in most cases they [disabled children] are living with a lone parent because what tends to happen in Russia is that the father disappears when a disabled child is born," Mr Farrell says.
"Often the mother of a disabled child is left alone, to struggle with the child, and a lot of the people we work with are in that situation."
Such is the stigma of having a child with a disability that where a woman tries to raise a disabled child on her own, "it is very rare even that her family will help her," Mrs Pavlova-Farrell says.
Visitors rarely see the worst orphanages, she says. "They have kind of show houses to show people from the Ministry or visitors."
Mr Farrell described an orphanage he had been brought to by the Ministry for Social Protection: "You could see it was cleaned up, but you could see the state of repair was very bad and the windows were very bad.
"There were draughts, and the children must have been freezing in winter. Even with the heating system, they must have been freezing."
The orphanages are severely understaffed, he says, citing one in which 25 staff care for 380 children and teenagers with learning disabilities.
The children's physical growth is hindered by poor nutrition. "You would look at a child and you would say he's eight years of age but you find out he's 11 and undernourished," he says. "It's frightening."
One orphanage which has many deaf children cannot afford to buy hearing aids. With the help of the Lions Club and other donors the Farrells have brought consignments of second-hand hearing aids to Russia.
Mrs Pavlova-Farrell's mother, Mrs Valentina Vankrva, will return to Russia with more hearing aids after a Christmas visit here.
She worked for some years as a psychiatric nurse in Siberia and says that people with learning disabilities often end up in psychiatric institutions.
Those women raising disabled children on their own face not only "normal" hardship, but the collapse of the rouble last August has quadrupled the price of basic foods, and many have not received their "pensions" or welfare payments since September.
The Moscow Disabled Persons' Club, Contacts-1, set up to support independent living for people with disabilities, now has to help out women in its area by providing one hot meal a day for their children, Mrs Pavlova-Farrell says.