Story By: Feza Uzay, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency:  Newsflash

The minders at the Russian orphanage where two teens abused a tot and posted a video of themselves blowing cigarette smoke in his face are set to be fired.

The teen in the footage, who gives the tot several smacks and then forces him to inhale second-hand smoke, has been detained.

The alleged abuse of the two-year-old toddler took place at the Kipelsky Orphanage in Russia’s Kurgan Oblast (region), the regional authorities said in a statement on Monday, 15th November.

An investigation was launched, and the Kurgan Oblast authorities announced that the senior minders at the orphanage will be fired while medical workers and a psychologist are facing disciplinary action for allowing the tot to be abused.

The tot in the video has undergone a full medical examination and has no health abnormalities, the statement said.

The teenager who committed the alleged crimes has been placed in a temporary detention centre. It is not clear if the teen who recorded the abuse is also being investigated. Neither of them have been named.

In one of the videos, one teen appears to promise the little boy an orange, and as he stands up and reaches for it, the teen smacks him, and he falls to the ground.

The two teens continue to abuse the young boy and eventually give him some orange peel.

In another video, the teen blows the smoke from his cigarette directly into the boy’s face and laughs as the tot inhales.

The boy’s mother, who was not named, said that her child was taken into care by the state after her home burnt down in 2019, and she was not able to provide adequate housing for him or her other children, according to Pledge Times.

She claimed that she regularly called the orphanage to check on her child and they always told her that there were no issues.

After seeing the video of her son being abused online, she called the authorities and they granted her permission to go and visit her son.

The woman has four other children, all of whom are currently being cared for at the orphanage, still according to Pledge Times.

Alena Lopatina, the ombudsman for children’s rights in Kurgan Oblast, said in the statement that she talked to all the children at the Kipelsky orphanage and they were all comfortable and happy.

She added that the children were surprised by the video and did not expect something like that to happen at the centre.

Lopatina told Russian media outlet Octagon that the tot’s mother had never called the orphanage and showed very little interest in her son’s welfare despite the claims she made.

She said: “When the children were taken away from the family, the mother was not even at home. The children were cold, hungry, unkempt, sitting by the stove, but there was no firewood.

“They could have died from cold, hunger or disease.”

The investigation is ongoing.