A mum who left her five-month-old baby to starve to death while she went out partying for two weeks has been sentenced to more than a decade of hard labour.
Alyona Ipatova, 19, admitted to leaving her baby alone in her apartment in Russia while she disappeared for a fortnight.
When she got back, a court heard, she found her infant daughter dead.
Ipatova - dubbed 'Monster Mum' by Russian media - was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years' hard labour when she appeared before a court in St Petersburg.
Chilling video footage of her courtroom appearance shows the crop-haired teenager in a white shirt locked in a bulletproof dock by guards as she gives her evidence.
"I really regret what I did. I did not want that to happen. I realise what I have done," she told the sentencing hearing.
Her lawyer Oleg Kiyashko claimed she had asked the child's father to help look after their daughter.
"Yes, she left the child at times. Although she left her, sometimes she came back in the morning or the father was at home, so he could still look after the girl," he claimed.
Judges rejected a defence plea to alter her charge from the murder of a minor with cruelty to causing death by negligence.
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