Maxim Lyutyi, 44, was trying to raise his newborn baby on prana-eating — a diet in which people go without food and water and “feed on the sun,” a court heard
Russia: Blogger confesses to causing the death of his newborn son
A raw food influencer and lifestyle blogger has pleaded guilty to starving his newborn baby to death after trying to raise the child on sunlight instead of food.
Maxim Lyutyi, 44, was trying to raise his newborn baby on prana-eating — a diet in which people go without food and water and “feed on the sun,” a court heard.
The baby, named Kosmos, was less than one month old and weighed just three-and-a-half pounds when he died. His official cause of death was “pneumonia and emaciation” after Lyutyi and his partner Oxana Mironova, 34, failed to properly feed the boy.
Lyutyi now faces up to eight years in jail and a fine for the “intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm” after he changed his plea and confessed that he did in fact cause the death of his baby.
He admitted his guilt in a final court appearance ahead of sentencing this week in Sochi. Previously, he had sought to pin the blame on Mironova who has already received a non-custodial sentence of two years “correctional labour”. He had claimed she had an iron deficiency which caused the death of the baby. Yet Lyutyi was found to be eating meat – 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 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’. He was accused of barring Mironova from breastfeeding the child. “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.
Oxana’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.”
Lyutyi is known as a “radical raw food fanatic”. Another relative of Mironiva said: “Oxana told me that she was afraid of him. “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.”
Oxana’s cousin Olesya Nikolayeva said: “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.”
He 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.
