A man has confessed to trying to murder a one-year-old boy in an airport who had just fled the conflict between Israel and Iran.
Belarusian Vladimir Vitkov, 31, a nuclear power plant construction worker, picked up and hurled little Yazdan on the ground of the arrivals hall of a Moscow airport.
The tot had arrived in Russia minutes earlier after he and his mother fled the bombing in Iran, according to local reports.
The 18-month-old is now fighting for his life in the hospital, with serious skull fractures and spinal injuries.
Vitkov was reported by some outlets to have been on the same flight as the child and his mother, who were escaping from Iran, where they had been visiting relatives.
Vitkov was returning home through Moscow after failing a drug and alcohol check for a job in Egypt.
He later confessed to being high on drugs when he threw the toddler head-first onto the ground.
In police discussions, Vitkov seemingly confessed to the crime when asked to explain what he did.
He told an officer: ‘I attempted to murder a child… at Sheremetyevo Airport.’
When asked what his motive was, Vitkov said he ‘didn’t know’ because he was ‘under the influence of drugs’.
Reports said cannabis had been found in his possession and there were traces of the drug in his blood.
Mash news outlet reported today that he had drunk three bottles of whisky and obtained cannabis in Cairo before the incident.
The Moscow region children’s ombudswoman Ksenia Mishonova labelled him a ‘drug-addled monster’, and called for him to be punished with ‘hard labour until he is feeble with old age’.
‘This was a stoned drug addict, a monster. I cannot call this person anything else. I believe he is not sick at all,’ she said.
‘In our country, drug addiction is like a disease — it is not a disease, but this is my position. He is an absolute monster, a criminal who should be judged in the most severe manner for what he did….’
By a ‘miracle’, the child’s brain was not damaged, she said, adding that he was now out of a medically-induced coma as doctors assessed his condition.
The boy’s distraught mother, Hajizada Sahar, had repeatedly asked her if her son would recover, she said.
Dr Tatyana Shapovalenko, chief doctor at the Roshal Children’s Centre, Moscow, said: ‘The child was admitted with a severe craniocerebral injury. He has an open fracture of the skull bones, a fracture of the base and vault of the skull, a subdural haematoma.”
She said he did not require neurosurgical treatment.
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