A newborn girl has been found covered in bites and sever sunburn being abandoned on an ant hill by her mother who now faces an attempted murder charge.
Nadezhda Sorokina, 32, from Russia, left the day-old girl in Milenino on July 23 before a horrified passerby spotted the screaming baby.
Nikolai Pakhomov found the newborn covered in agonising ant bites and told local media that he initially thought the baby's crying was kittens mewing.
Medics, who declared the newborn fit apart from the insect bites and sunburn, called in a local priest who named the tot Maria Nikolaevna, in honour of her rescuer.
Maria is in the custody of local child services and there is already a married couple waiting to adopt her, reports local media.
Police later tracked down Sorokina, who now facing an attempted murder charge
The single mum of three reportedly confessed to giving birth to the girl on July 22 and then abandoning her because she could not afford to feed a fourth child.
One neighbour Veronika Dokukina, however, claims Sorokina may have decided to abandon the baby after a break-up with the girl's dad.
She said: 'I have a small child myself — a one-year-old. I was giving her baby clothes, and she said, 'I don't need them anymore.'
'I asked, 'What happened?' She said, 'He stressed me out, I got so nervous that I had a miscarriage.'
'It seems she didn't have a miscarriage at all, she hid it. It means she planned it in advance.'
Nadezhda's ex-husband, the father of her other children, claimed he had no knowledge of her actions.
He stated that she was never an exemplary mother, but he could never have imagined this.
Newborn covered in bites and sunburn after being left on ant hill
Nadezhda Sorokina, 32, from Russia, left the day-old girl in Milenino on July 23 before a horrified passerby spotted the screaming baby.
