Witnesses in the case of the death of a baby in Kaliningrad reported threats from a doctor

The court heard the witnesses in the case of Kaliningrad doctors Elena Belaya and Elina Sushkevich, accused of murdering a newborn baby. This was announced on April 2 by a correspondent of Izvestia from the hall of the Moscow Regional Court.

One of the witnesses stated that at the general meeting on the day of the incident, Belaya used obscenities and threats, and also ordered to rewrite the history of childbirth and newborns, informing the victim that the child was stillborn. According to her, the doctor was seeking a promotion and claimed that colleagues were "spoiling statistics and her reputation."

Another witness reported that on the morning of that day, the child was connected to a ventilator. The baby was alive, and the monitor showed his heartbeat, but then, according to her, a White Woman came and kicked everyone out of the ward. After that, the doctor stated that the newborn was dead, and two days later, by her order, all the data concerning the delivery of the victim was "glossed over".

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In November 2018, a woman was admitted to maternity hospital No. 4 in Kaliningrad, who gave birth to a boy weighing about 700 g at an extremely early stage of pregnancy. The Investigative Committee (IC) of the Russian Federation has established that the acting chief physician of the Belaya maternity hospital and the anesthesiologist-resuscitator of the regional perinatal center Sushkevich decided to kill the child in order not to spoil the statistics.

It was later reported that an expensive drug was needed to maintain the baby's vital functions, and Belaya allegedly decided not to waste the resources of the maternity hospital. The investigation believed that she had instructed the baby to be given a dose of magnesium sulfate, and to write in the birth history that the child was stillborn. The doctors did not admit their guilt.

The medical community came to the defense of the doctors. In particular, Leonid Roshal, president of the National Medical Chamber Union of the medical Community, said that "everything is not so simple."

In December 2020, the Kaliningrad Regional Court acquitted the doctors. At the same time, the UK stated that their guilt had been proven. The prosecutor's office appealed the decision, and in May 2021, the court overturned the acquittal of Belaya and Sushkevich.

Then, in September 2022, the Moscow Regional Court sentenced Belaya and Sushkevich to 9.5 and 9 years in prison, respectively. They were also banned from practicing medicine for a period of three years. In December 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed the cassation appeals against the doctors' verdict. Later, on October 2, 2024, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation sent the case for reconsideration, leaving the doctors in custody.