- Russian father faces up to eight years in prison and heavy fines for brutal treatment
- His partner Oksana Mironova has already been sentenced to two years in prison.
A father who publishes a lifestyle blog has confessed that he starved his newborn son to death in an attempt to prove that he could survive on sunlight alone.
His child Cosmos died of “pneumonia and weakness” after Maxim Luti, 44, and his partner Oksana Mironova, 34, failed to properly feed the baby boy, who was less than a month old.
The Russian father could be sentenced to up to eight years in prison and fined for “intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm”.
He pleaded guilty in a final court appearance before sentencing in Sochi this week.
Previously, he had tried to shift the blame to Mironova, who is already serving a non-custodial sentence of two years of “corrective labor.”
The court was previously told that Ms Ryuti wanted to raise her newborn on a pranic diet, or “eating the sun” without food or water for long periods of time.
He was accused of preventing Mironova from breastfeeding her child and was described as a “radical raw food fanatic”.
“He wanted to experiment on children and give them pure sunlight and advertise to others that they would be eaten,” one source said.
Oksana's mother Galina accused the evil Lyuti of running a “sect”.
“I opposed my daughter's membership in this sect,” she said.
“I felt everything and told her that Maxim was crazy, but she did not listen to me.
“Oksana lived there like a guinea pig. Every time she became cold towards me…she was his slave.”
Another of Mironiva's relatives said: “Oksana told me that she was scared of him. She tried to leave him many times, but he held her back…
“He wanted to grow.” [his son into] A man who only eats the sun.''
“He forced her not to feed the baby,” said Oksana's cousin Olesya Nikolaeva. Her boyfriend believed that the sun was nourishing the baby.
“Oksana was secretly trying to breastfeed the baby, but she was very scared of Maxim. How could she expose the baby to sunlight and nourish it?
“Babies need their mother's milk.”
Lyuti refused to send Oksana to the maternity hospital and gave birth to her child at home.
Eventually they decided to take the emaciated baby to a doctor, but medical staff could do nothing to save the severely malnourished baby.
Oksana's mother previously said she sent money to her daughter to help her in any way she could, but with her partner's watchful eye, she was unable to feed her daughter enough.
“(Lyuti) forbade her to feed the child.''
“Oksana told me that she was secretly breastfeeding the baby, but she didn't have enough money because he didn't give her anything.
“I sent food money to Oksana from my pension. She secretly bought baby food.
