The Attack and Immediate Rescue
In 2023, 19-year-old Sergey Kyalundzyuga and his 23-year-old cousin Alexander Sigde were on a fishing trip in the Russian taiga. As they prepared for the night in a winter cabin, Sergey heard a strange noise outside. He asked his cousin if he had heard it, then pulled back the curtain and saw a huge head -- a Siberian tiger. The tiger leaped through the cabin door, knocking Alexander to the floor. Alexander found his rifle and shot the cat, but by then it had bitten off Sergey's arm.
Sergey recounted the moment: "I was lucky I managed to put my arm up. It bit into my shoulder -- it was going for my neck -- and clawed me across the back. Alexander ran out, grabbed the rifle hanging by the door, and shot the tiger point blank in the head."
Alexander acted quickly, tying a tourniquet around Sergey's upper arm and then setting off to find their uncle, Mikhail, who was staying in another hut. Mikhail helped carry Sergey to his cabin, where the family found phone reception. Because Mikhail's snowmobile had broken down in the forest, he had to ski nearly 45 kilometers to get help. Sergey was airlifted to a hospital in Khabarovsk with multiple broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a loss of two liters of blood. He also had an infected wound where he lost the arm.
The Aftermath and Legal Proceedings
Police accused Alexander of triggering the attack by firing bullets into the forest, and in May 2025, an appeals court convicted him of killing an endangered species. The conviction came after Vladimir Putin adopted tiger preservation as one of his new favourite causes.
Sergey has since told Meduza that he now lives in Luchegorsk, a coastal village in Russia's far-eastern Primorsky Krai, to "get away from everyone." At the time of the attack, his father had been killed in a tree felling accident just a year earlier. Sergey was studying welding and working part-time to support his siblings and disabled mother.
Sergey also said that he ran away from a journalist because his lawyer banned him from talking to the press, and that he cried for a week straight after realizing his arm was gone.