People gather outside a maternity hospital after the state Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into the deaths of nine newborn babies and detained the hospital's chief doctor and acting head of the intensive care unit, in the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk, Russia, Jan. 14, 2026. Svetlana Sheremetyeva-Sherstnyov/REUTERS

Russian police have arrested the chief physician and the acting head of intensive care at a Siberian hospital where nine babies died this month, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The case, which has shone a spotlight on chronic staff shortages and funding gaps in the country's medical system, has provoked anger and bewilderment from Russian politicians and online commentators.

Prosecutors have charged the pair with negligence and causing death through negligence, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The exact causes of the deaths at Novokuznetsk Maternity Hospital No. 1 are not yet known. But regional health authorities said the babies were all suffering from a range of diseases and died during childbirth or pregnancy.

The local health ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that 234 children were born at the hospital between Dec. 1 and Jan. 11, with 17 babies considered to be in a serious condition in the hospital's intensive care unit.

"Of the 17 infants in a critical condition, 16 of them were premature, including those with extremely low birth weight. All 17 had a severe intrauterine infection," the health ministry statement said. "Unfortunately, nine children did not survive."

The Reuters news agency, citing the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, reported that the hospital received at least five warnings from health authorities between August and November last year.

Pavel Vorobyov, a Russian doctor, questioned why no action was taken earlier, Reuters reported.

"With the first death, they (doctors and nurses) should have bust a gut and started doing something... when nine people have died and everyone is silent, something very strange is going on," Argumenty i Fakty quoted him as saying.

The hospital announced on Tuesday that it had stopped accepting patients due to a high rate of respiratory infection.

"Between January 4 and January 12, 2026, nine newborns died at Novokuznetsk Maternity Hospital No. 1 as a consequence of the suspects performing their official and professional medical duties in a substandard way," Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement.

A forensic probe into each baby's death was underway, it added.

Russia's Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported on Tuesday that the hospital was short of dozens of staff, though the hospital has denied this.

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament called the incident a tragedy.

"It must never be repeated," Valentina Matvienko said in a statement.

The governor of the Kuzbass region, of which Novokuznetsk is a part, announced Tuesday he had ordered an inspection of all the region's maternity and pre-natal hospitals.

And pro-Kremlin lawmaker Yana Lantratova said on Telegram: "In times of a demographic crisis, allowing several infants to die in one maternity hospital in such a short period is a crime against the country."

The other maternity hospital in Novokuznetsk -- a city home to around half a million people in southern Siberia -- remains open, the region's health ministry said.

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