A Siberian tiger smashed through the glass of a winter cabin and ripped off the arm of a sleeping man during a fishing trip in the Russian taiga in 2023. The attack left 19-year-old Sergey Kyalundzyuga with severe injuries, including a collapsed lung and the loss of his arm.
Attack in the night
Sergey Kyalundzyuga and his 23-year-old cousin Alexander Sigde were on a fishing trip in the Russian taiga. As they settled for the night in a winter cabin, Sergey heard a strange noise outside. “Did you hear that?” he asked his cousin, who was lying on the bed. Sergey pulled back the curtain “and there it was, this huge head.”
The tiger leaped through the cabin door. His cousin Alexander was knocked to the floor and by the time he had found his rifle and shot the cat, it had bitten off Sergey's arm. Sergey said: “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.”
Rescue and recovery
Alexander tied a tourniquet around Sergey's upper arm and set off to find their uncle, Mikhail, who was staying in another hut. Mikhail helped carry Sergey to his cabin, and his family found phone reception. His snowmobile had broken down in the forest, so Mikhail had to ski nearly 45 kilometers to get help.
Sergey was airlifted to a hospital in Khabarovsk. At this point he had multiple broken ribs and a collapsed lung and had lost two liters of blood. He also had an infected wound where he lost the arm.
Legal consequences
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. This came after Vladimir Putin adopted tiger preservation as one of his new favourite causes.
Life after the attack
Sergey Kyalundzyuga used to tuck his empty left sleeve so no one could see he was missing an arm, but has a healthy attitude towards his missing limb and even jokes about it. He told Meduza he now lives in Luchegorsk, a coastal village in Russia's far-eastern Primorsky Krai to “get away from everyone”.
Sergey said this is also what he was doing when he went fishing with his cousin. His father had been killed the year before in a tree felling accident. He said: “I thought I'd find some peace in the taiga, make some money from the fish, and pull myself together.”
At the time Sergey was studying welding at college and was working part-time as he needed to support his two younger sisters, younger brother, and disabled mother. He said he ran away from a journalist because “my lawyer banned me from talking to the press.”
He said the attack still affects him but “on the other hand if it hadn't been me, someone else might have died.” He added: “When I opened my eyes, I was already on a stretcher in the hospital. Photographers and journalists were flashing lights right in my face — it was awful. I blacked out again and came to when my mom walked in. I could barely sit up, and that's when I realized my arm was gone. I cried for a week straight.”
