A ‘radical raw food fanatic’ has confessed to killing his one-month-old son by feeding him sunlight instead of food and water.
Lifestyle blogger Maxim Lyutyi, 43, wanted his baby boy Kosmos to be like Superman, a Russian court heard.
Instead the newborn died of ‘pneumonia and emaciation’ while on the way to see a doctor in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in Krasnodar.
Lyutyi was expecting to be released from prison this March after a year in prison, according to an Instagram post shared with his nearly 60,000 followers in January.
Now he faces more than eight years in prison for ‘intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm’ after changing his plea to guilty at the last minute last week.
Kosmos was born at home because Lyutyi refused to let the boy’s mother, Oksana Mironova, go to a maternity hospital.
Lyutyi then started the baby on a strictly vegan ’prana’ diet based on foods like berries that supposedly have a positive effect on the body’s spiritual energy.
A more extreme version- known as breatharianism – believes it’s possible to survive on sunlight alone.
Mironova’s cousin Olesya Nikolayeva said: ‘He forced her not to feed the baby. Her boyfriend believed that the sun was feeding the baby.
‘Oksana was secretly trying to breastfeed the baby, but she was very afraid of Maxim.
‘How is it possible to feed the baby with sunlight? A baby needs his mother’s milk.’
Lyutyi wanted ‘to experiment on the child, feed him purely with the sun, and then advertise it to others that this is how you can eat’, the Mirror reported one source as saying.
He also refused conventional medicine and doused Kosmos in cold water to toughen him up, the court previously heard.
The 48-year-old has now totally abandoned this lifestyle, starting to even eat meat during his time in prison.
Mironova’s mother Galina wishes this had happened sooner.
She said: ‘I was against my daughter being in this sect.
‘I felt everything, and told her that Maxim was crazy, but she didn’t listen to me.
‘Oksana lived there like a guinea pig. Each time she became colder to me…. She was his slave.’
Another relative said: ‘She wanted to leave him many times, but he held her back.
‘He wanted to raise [his son into] a man who only eats the sun.’
By the time Lyutyi agreed to let his baby boy go to hospital, it was already too late.
Kosmos was so malnourished he died before he got there on March 8 last year.
Medics declared the 3.5 pound baby dead and both Lyutyi and Mironova were arrested.
Lytutyi initially tried to pin the blame on his partner – who has already been handed two years of ‘correctional labour’ – claiming she had an iron deficiency that caused Kosmos’ death.
However he finally confessed to killing his own son when he appeared at his final court hearing ahead of his sentencing this week.
But he insisted he had no intention to harm his son, pleading with the court to reduce to consider it a crime of negligence in sentencing.
He told the court: ‘I fully admit my guilt that through my inaction and frivolity I caused the death by negligence of my long-awaited, beloved first-born.
‘I am also guilty that for the reasons stated above, precisely due to frivolity and carelessness, I improperly fulfilled my parental responsibilities, I repent of this.
‘But I assure you that I never starved the child, did not forbid the mother to feed him, never hardened him and never poured cold water on my child.’
Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of eight and a half years in prison and a nearly £900 fine.
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