This is the terrifying moment a two-year-old toddler teeters on the edge of a 22nd-floor window sill after his mum left him home alone to go to a football match with her lover.
Dizzying video footage recorded in Krasnodar, in southern Russia, shows the nappy-wearing tot leaning out of the open window above a deadly 350-foot drop.
A second clip shows police striding into the apartment after neighbours broke down the front door to pull the young boy back from the brink.
One man carries the toddler in his arms in an apartment full of broken furniture.
A witness, named only as Yana, told local media: “We saw it all from the balcony. And, honestly, it was terribly scary!
“Especially when the child threw out some things. I was afraid to see him fall after them.”
One neighbour said she stopped the tot from crawling out of the window by shouting at him.
She said: “I called people from below. I couldn’t go down and run to the house because the baby crawled out towards the ledge, and in response to my loud screams, he stopped.”
Local media said that the toddler had been left alone after his mum and her lover went to a football match.
Local security guard Nazim Shiraliev, with his partner, broke down the door to the flat. He told local media: “They leave the child like this very often, the neighbours say. This is not the first time.”
He added: “They called us, the guards. We, of course, ran to the 22nd floor and broke down the door.
“There were still people with us. We all ran into the apartment together and literally snatched the child from the windowsill.”
The boy’s mother is now being investigated by the police and child welfare officials.
Artem Konovalenko, head of the press service of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for Krasnodar, said: “An administrative protocol has been drawn up for improper performance of parental responsibilities against a mother who left her young child alone at home unattended with open windows in the apartment.”
The boy has been taken away from his mum and placed in a children’s home, according to local media.