An influencer has confessed to causing the death of his one-month-old son after demanding he should live on sunlight instead of food.
Lifestyle blogging father Maxim Lyutyi, 44, changed his court plea after his child, Kosmos, died from ‘pneumonia and emaciation' after failing to feed him properly.
The Russian father, from Krasnodar region, faces up to eight years in jail and a fine for the “intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm”.
He admitted his guilt in a final court appearance ahead of sentencing this week in Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea.
Previously, Lyutyi had sought to pin the blame on his partner Oxana Mironova, 34, who has already received a non-custodial sentence of two years “correctional labour”.
He had claimed she had an iron deficiency as a result of her dietary choices that caused the death of the baby, which weighed just three-and-a-half pounds.
The court found that the mother has to share some of the responsibility and previously found her guilty of failure to fulfil her parental responsibilities and failure to provide assistance to an infant.
Lyutyi's lawyer Alexey Avanesyan told the court: "Several years before meeting Lyutyi, Mironova opted for the vegan lifestyle.
"Premature babies, children of mothers suffering from iron deficiency anaemia during pregnancy, are at risk."
Yet Lyutyi was found to be eating meat and pasta with stew, ignoring his own strictures, as he was held in a Russian detention jail for more than a year since the baby’s death.
The court was earlier told how Lyutyi wanted to raise the newborn on prana-eating — a diet in which people go without food and water for a long time and ‘feed on the sun’.
They were also told he had wanted to experiment on the toddler to make him like Superman.
Lyutyi was accused of barring Mironova from breastfeeding the child, too.
“He 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,” said one source.
Mironova's mother, Galina, accused the sinister Lyutyi of running a “sect”.
“I was against my daughter being in this sect,” she said. “I felt everything, and told her that Maxim was crazy, but she didn't listen to me.
“Oxana lived there like a guinea pig. Each time she became colder to me….
“She was his slave.”
Another of Mironiva's relatives, who remains anonymous, said she was "afraid" of Lyutyi - known to be a “radical raw food fanatic”.
“She wanted to leave him many times, but he held her back…," they said.
“He wanted to raise [his son into] a man who only eats the sun.”
Oxana’s cousin, Olesya Nikolayeva, added: “He forced her not to feed the baby.
“Her boyfriend believed that the sun was feeding the baby.
“Oxana 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 had delivered the child at home, refusing to let Oxana go to a maternity hospital.
They eventually decided to take the emaciated child to doctors but it was too late and the baby died on the way on March 8, 2023.
