A boy was locked in his cockroach-infested home alone for eight days with only dry rice to eat while his mother visited friends.
Natalya Azarenkova, 31, has been detained by Russian police and faces losing her starving son Mikhail, ten, who was taken to hospital.
His ordeal came to light when he screamed for help to neighbours in an apartment block in Peredelkino, Moscow, after four days alone.
His door was locked from the outside and he begged them not to call the emergency services, fearing he would be sent to an orphanage and never see his mother again.
Starving Mikhail told how she had left him rice but no water to cook it, after saying she was going to walk their dog.
During her absence, she appears to have looked after the family's pet Dzaina while leaving the boy incarcerated home alone in a hell hole flat with no food or water.
Power and water were cut off in the cockroach-infested apartment, so he could not cook the rice.
Neighbours lowered food and juice to him from a balcony on the flat above but when his mother did not return the following day, they called in the emergency services fearing for the boy's life.
