Held Hostage by the Tigers

Story and Photos by The New Tab

IN KHABAROVSK KRAI, a young man has spent two years trying to prove he shot a tiger to save his cousin’s life, but the court is taking the police’s word and charging him with poaching. 

In February 2023, 19-year-old Sergei Kyalundzyuga and 23-year-old Alexander Sigde set out from the remote Far Eastern village of Arsenyevo to fish in the taiga. The cousins, two of the approximately 1,600 Udege people living in Russia’s Primorsky and Khabarovsk regions, were spending the night in a forest hut when some noise outside prompted Kyalundzyuga to look out the window. He was instantly knocked over by an Amur tiger that came crashing through the glass. By the time Sigde was able to grab his rifle and shoot the tiger, the predator had bitten off Kyalundzyuga’s arm. 

The police who investigated the incident concluded that Sigde had provoked the tiger into attacking his cousin by shooting it earlier that day in the forest. In May 2025, an appeals court pronounced Kyalundzyuga guilty of killing a “Red Listed” animal – the Amur tiger is included in the International Union of Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species and Russia’s own Red Book. 

This is not the first time the state has taken the tiger’s side in a confrontation between human and tiger. After all, President Vladimir Putin has taken a personal interest in the fate of this endangered species. People are being left to take care of themselves. 

“A Paper To Sign With Their Own Version Of Events”

For a long time after being released from the hospital, Kyalundzyuga would use a hoodie to hide his face and stick his empty left sleeve into a pocket, to make it look as if there was an arm there. Now he no longer pays attention to the sidelong glances he gets from passersby, and, when he meets someone, he even tries to make light of his situation. 

From a distance, we notice the shortish fellow in a gray t-shirt with a dangling sleeve and black sneakers. The sneakers were laced by a friend about a year ago, and Kyalundzyuga hasn’t unlaced them since: it’s not easy to tie your shoes with one arm. I extend my arm for a handshake and can feel the calluses. Sergei explains that he carries weights to develop his remaining arm. He now lives in the town of Luchegorsk in Primorsky Krai, where he moved in September 2024 “to get away from everyone.” And from the taiga and its tigers. 

In January 2023, the two cousins and three other relatives mounted snow mobiles to make the 70-kilometer trip from Arsenyevo to the Tormasu River in the Anyuy National Park. The plan was to fish and overnight in forest huts. After a few days, they packed up their catch in bags and the three who left first took the fish back home. 

Kyalundzyuga said that fishing was not his only reason for going into the forest: he was struggling to deal with thoughts of his father, who had been killed a year earlier when a birch tree cut down by a relative had fallen on him. “I thought the taiga would bring me peace, that I’d make a bit of money from the fish, and it would help me recover,” he explained. At the time, he was attending a technical college, training to become a welder, a profession that was already earning him some money. After his father died, he had to help support his family: he had three younger siblings and his mother is disabled: all the money he earned was sent home. 

As we walk down a narrow path, Sergei seems to be trying to avoid the photographer and me. He jokes that he tries to steer clear of journalists, because his “lawyer says he shouldn’t talk to the press.” 

It’s still difficult for him to talk about the attack. He told us he hadn’t wanted to go into the forest, because he had a “premonition.” 

“On the other hand,” he said, “if I hadn’t come along, someone else might have died.” 

Around 11 o’clock on the night of February 12, Kyalundzyuga heard a noise on the roof. He thought it might be the cat they had brought from home to catch mice in the hut. A bag of fish that couldn’t fit on the departing snowmobile was up in the attic. 

“Hear that?” he asked his cousin, who was already in bed. He pulled aside the curtain and “right there was this huge head.” The tiger jumped right through the window, sending shards of glass flying in all directions. 

“I was lucky that I managed to thrust my arm out. He bit my shoulder, but he’d been aiming for my neck, and he dug his claws into my back.” Sergei pulled down his t-shirt collar to show a hollow between his shoulder blades. “Sashka [Alexander] rushed to get his rifle – it was hanging on a hook behind the door – and shot the tiger in the head at point-blank range.”

Sigde applied a tourniquet to Kyalundzyuga’s forearm to stop the bleeding, laid him in the bed, and turned on the television to distract him. There was no cell service in the hut, so Sigde went to get help from his uncle Mikhail, who was spending the night in another hut about ten kilometers away. Mikhail helped transport his wounded nephew to his heated cabin and set out for a road to try to pick up a signal – he was the only one who knew the right spot. Earlier, his snowmobile had broken down in the forest, so Mikhail had to ski 45 kilometers cross country on fresh snow. 

It wasn’t until two days after the attack, on February 14, that Kyalundzyuga was transported via helicopter to a hospital in Khabarovsk. He had several broken ribs, a displaced lung, and had lost two liters of blood. By then, the wound where his arm had been torn off was infected. 

“I opened my eyes, and I was on a hospital gurney. Photographers and journalists were right in my face. I was really woozy. I passed out and then woke up when my mother came in. I struggled to sit up, and only then noticed that my arm was missing. I cried for a whole week,” Kyalundzyuga recalled. 

Later he learned that, before the attack, the tiger had ransacked several forest huts: it burst through the door of one and tore apart a foam mattress in another. 

The forensic examination of the tiger that had attacked Kyalundzyuga found pieces of foam in its stomach. 

In March, a man and woman in police uniforms came to see Sergei in the hospital. 

“They waited until my mother left to buy some groceries and came into the ward. They began asking me to describe what happened. I told them and they didn’t believe me. I thought they were writing down what I told them, but in fact they gave me a paper to sign with their own version of events. I stupidly signed without reading it,” he said. He was still not thinking clearly.

According to the investigators’ version, Kyalundzyuga and Sigde were poaching, and Sigde had at first shot the tiger in the taiga, and then several days later the animal, enraged by its wound, had attacked Kyalundzyuga and Sigde had killed it. How the tiger wound up inside the hut is not addressed in the case file. Did the attack supposedly take place outside the hut? Did the cousins – one with an arm torn off and hemorrhaging blood – drag the dead tiger into the hut themselves? Those were minor details: the main point was that a tiger had been illegally hunted. 

“Meanwhile, Tigra Has To Eat Something”

In sunny Luchegorsk, where Kyalundzyuga now lives, images of tigers are everywhere: there’s a bright green topiary in the form of the predator in the central square, a hand-painted image of a tiger decorates a bench, a display promotes the importance of preserving these rare beasts. The Amur tiger may be the pride of the Far East, but in recent years it has also become a major danger: the Red-Listed cats kill dogs, cows, and horses in local villages. And they occasionally attack people. 

Tigers rarely show up in Luchegorsk. The last time the striped predator was spotted in the area was last winter, about 12 kilometers away, near an active coal mine where workers are in the habit of feeding stray dogs. One dog, with its tail between its legs, crawled under an excavator when a tigress and her cubs passed nearby. 

Many of the locals we asked about tigers had stories to tell about encounters between people and the dangerous cats. They all have a unifying theme: the state has not only distanced itself from solving the problem; it has literally taken the tiger’s side, even when outcomes have been lethal for the human. 

“When people kill an animal in self-defense, not only do they get stuck with a million-ruble fine – they’re taken to court. I know two people who were attacked – the tiger got into their forest hut: one died, the other shot the tiger. The fine was a million and a half, and the sentence was six months,” we were told by Alexei, whom we met on the street. “[Poachers] shoot them, and some are just wounded, so they attack. Plus, they’re hungry – the hunters have killed all the game, so there’s nothing to eat in the forest.”

At the bus station we meet retiree Tamara from the neighboring village of Verkhny Pereval. Like many Far Easterners, she refers to the striped predator as Tigra [Тигра rather than the standard тигр]. In her village, the Red Listed cats have taken several dogs that were kept on chains. 

“One Tigra settled down on the Bikin side and another Tigra on the Alchan side,” she said, naming towns on either side of the border between Khabarovsk and Primorsky krais. They divvied up our village into two halves. And we weren’t allowed to kill them! They help themselves to dogs every winter,” Tamara said. 

Tigers have been hanging around Verkhny Pereval for the past three or four years, she said, ever since African swine fever swept through the Primorye area, killing off many of the wild boars that live in its forests.

“People would go mushroom picking and report that carcasses [of wild boars] were all over the place. Meanwhile, Tigra has to eat something,” she said.

Tamara recalled how one man hit a tiger on the highway and called the police: “He was fined. Was he supposed to go flying into a ditch to avoid hitting the tiger?”

When we stopped by a local cafeteria for lunch, a 50-year-old man with a red face joined our table. He was drinking fruit juice and surreptitiously dosing it with what looked like cognac. He turned out to be Andrei, a machinist at the local coal mine. As soon as we said the word “tiger,” he recalled the story of how his acquaintance had to spend winter nights guarding his horse with a rifle in a neighborhood of summer homes not far from Luchegorsk, because “Tigra was roaming around.” Another acquaintance had to shoot at a tiger.

“He said: ‘It’s one thing when he ate all the dogs, but when he came after my wife, I shot him.’ He was given a fine of several million rubles and went to prison. I think he did the right thing, but from our [Primorsky Krai Governor Oleg] Kozhemyako we get: ‘What are you doing – tigers are off limits!’ God forbid you kill a tiger – they’ll lock you up.” 

Andrei said he believes that the predators have been coming into towns and villages because of logging. 

“There are no cedars, no squirrels, no wild boar. Personally, I blame Moscow.”

“Who specifically?”

“The leadership, the very top.”

In February 2023, more than 600 people in Khabarovsk Krai signed an open letter to President Putin asking for a ban on wild boar hunting and the cutting down of trees that the boars need to survive (oaks and cedars in particular), so that tigers would be able to find the food they need in the forests. They also asked for permission to fire warning shots to scare off tigers in populated areas. Wild boar hunting was banned in Khabarovsk Krai for three years, starting in June 2023. An analogous ban was enacted in Khabarovsk Krai in June 2023. But experts admit that it will take a lot longer for the wild board population to recover, after dropping 70 percent in 2021-2022 due to African swine fever. 

“I Had Almost Reached The Shed When I Heard A Roar”

The Khabarovsk Krai village of Arsenyevo, the former home of cousins Sergei and Alexander, has had experiences of its own. The most recent encounter occurred in December 2024, when a tiger attacked a local Udege woman’s two dogs. Nadezhda Kyalundiga’s house stands at the edge of the village, not far from the forest. She works at the local grocery store. Standing behind the store counter, she was almost laughing as she told us what happened to her, but in the immediate aftermath of her tiger encounter, even the sound of a passing car would make her jump.

“My husband was working the night shift, and at three in the morning I heard footsteps – shug, shug. One of our dogs, Amur, started suddenly howling: Woooooo! And then it fell silent,” Kyalundiga said. 

It was dark, and she was afraid to go out, so she went back to bed. In the morning, she saw what was left of Amur. The second dog was nowhere to be found. She went to the shed to check on the cow and calves.

“I had almost gotten to the shed when I heard a roar: grrrr. I wondered: was I imagining it? And then the yelping really started! My knees went weak. I wanted to go, but I couldn’t. I don’t remember how I fumbled my way back to the house,” she said. 

Kyalundiga telephoned the village administration. When the wildlife inspector came, the tiger was up in the hayloft eating what was left of her dog Jackie. Noticing the movement, the tiger jumped down and pounced on one of the inspectors. He managed to set off a fusée – a type of flare used in wildlife suppression – but it didn’t deter the tiger. It took the second inspector a while to aim and fire his gun, because he was afraid of hitting his colleague. 

“And that other fellow was howling, screaming. I had to cover my ears, I was so scared! He fired six times. If he’d have used a tranquilizer, the tiger would have torn the guy to pieces in the time it would have taken to do the injection…. That snout is huge, although the animal was skinny and creepy looking, as if he was mangy,” Kyalundiga said. She gave an equally vivid description of the terrified wildlife inspector, whose wounds she treated with hydrogen peroxide: his lips were blue and “his face was white as chalk.”

For a month afterwards, Kyalundiga’s husband escorted her to work.

Locals say that there have always been tigers around Arsenyevo, but it wasn’t until the winter of 2022-2023 that their dogs started being taken. Like the people of Luchegorsk, those of Arsenyevo have heard plenty of talk about the African swine fever that killed off half the region’s wild boar population, leaving tigers with nothing to eat. 

“The tigers are exhausted and weak. The tiger that was killed – his tail had been bitten off, since other tigers fought with it to get it out of their territory,” said Kyalundiga’s husband Igor, when he came to her store to vent about the tigers to journalists. He blames the tigers’ presence in populated areas on the logging of timber that’s being sold to China.

“What are they cutting down? Oak trees. But the oak tree is the wild boar’s main food source. If that source is being reduced every year, why the hell are we trying to cultivate more tigers? That’s what I’ve been telling one correspondent after another,” Igor said, turning away from the counter in frustration.

“What Do We Have – Tigers All Over The Place?”

The people who live in the tiny villages that dot the taiga of Primorsky and Khabarovsk krais have essentially become hostages of the tigers: they aren’t allowed to kill them, and it’s unclear what they’re supposed to do when one of them threatens a human. And publicizing attacks by the Red Listed cats is also discouraged. 

“We don’t even know what we’re supposed to be doing. There are organizations like the Amur Tiger Center – they’re starting to put on the pressure. They say we’re not supposed to put anything on the internet,” Kyalundiga said. “When the police came, they said [in regard to photos on social media]: ‘Why are you sharing this stuff?’”

At the Arsenyevo village administration, in an office decorated with house plants, we’re greeted by the village head, Igor Lonchakov. He doesn’t seem too pleased to see us and considers the problem to be exaggerated.

“Why are you even doing this?” Lonchakov asked. “We went over this issue two years ago; there were five correspondents. What do we have – tigers all over the place? I’m a biologist and there’s one thing I know: there hasn’t been a single tiger attack against a woman or child. That incident [where Sergei Kyalundzyuga lost his arm] was in the taiga, those were hunters, that was the tiger’s territory. But attacks against humans in populated areas? Name one – you won’t be able to.”

Lonchakov blames the dog owners for the December attack on their pets, since the dogs weren’t locked up. He added that protecting cities and villages should be the job of the police, not the head of the village. 

Thankfully, in Arsenyevo, the Red Listed cats haven’t attacked any people. However, during the winter of 2023, before Kyalundyuga had his arm bitten off, there were several predators roaming around. 

“My husband was walking to catch a bus – and a tiger was running right in front of him!” salesclerk Kyalundiga said.

That same year, a tiger killed a dog under the porch of a house in Arsenyevo, and another was captured at a nearby apiary. A hungry young tigress found a frying pan with some food left by workers not far from the village. As it was trying to lick the remaining food out the pan, her tongue got stuck to the icy metal, and by the time she managed to extricate herself, the snow was spattered with blood. The emaciated animal also tore apart a pillow that fell off a passing snowmobile. Animal control personnel tranquilized the tigress so they could take her into the forest, but she was so weak, she never woke up, according to Dmitry Kyalundzyuga, who represents the Khabarovsk Krai branch of the Association of Small-Population Indigenous Northern Peoples in the village of Arsenyevo. 

Dmitry is Sergei Kyalundzyuga’s uncle. Since there are so few Udeges, like other ethnic groups with small populations, most are closely related to one another. 

Over the past year, most tiger attacks in the Far East have occurred not near homes, but on the outskirts of towns and villages. For example, in the fall of 2024, a logging worker was dragged into the taiga and killed near the Khabarovsk Krai village of Solontsovy. In December, a tiger left a man who was glamping in the Anyuy National Park with broken ribs. His wife and children miraculously escaped unharmed. In the spring of 2025, one of the predators killed a forester in Primorsky Krai.

In a talk delivered at a recent conference in Moscow, Sergei Aramilev, general director of the Amur Tiger Center, said that human deaths from Amur tigers are extremely rare: during the period from 2010 to 2024, there were 20 recorded attacks, of which seven were fatal. The human was at fault in every case, he said.

“Tigers are provoked to attack humans by gunshot wounds and other injuries caused by people; the animals are also harassed when protecting their offspring or going after prey,” he explained. “Two recent cases from 2025 are consistent with the overall statistics: both tigers had numerous firearm wounds. So [reports of] unprovoked aggression by tigers toward humans are preposterous and exist only in unverified internet posts.”

“Otherwise, They Won’t Let You Go”

The Udeges of Arsenyevo don’t believe the investigators’ claim that Sergei and his cousin provoked the attack by hunting the tiger. The president of the Khabarovsk Krai Association of Small-Population Indigenous Northern Peoples, Lyubov Odzyal, said that indigenous people do not engage in poaching, which is not allowed by their traditions and spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, Sigde and his cousins are young guys who would have had no experience hunting and who were brought into the taiga by older relatives. 

Odzyal said she has spent time with Alexander’s parents, who told her that during March 11-13, 2023, almost everyone who went into the taiga with Sigde and Kyalundzyuga were picked up by the police, released late at night for a few hours, and then detained again early the next morning for further interrogation. Alexander Zasukhin, Sigde’s defense attorney, confirmed that a lengthy interrogation did indeed take place, from nine in the morning until two the following morning, but it did not continue the following day. Odzyal said she believes that Alexander’s uncle, Mikhail, told his nephew to agree to the investigator’s version and accept guilt: “Otherwise, they won’t let you go.” We did not have an opportunity to speak with either the uncle or the nephew: Alexander Sigde refused to speak with us and his uncle Mikhail did not respond to our requests for an interview. 

Two criminal cases were brought against Sigde: in addition to the charge of illegally hunting a particularly valuable wild animal, he was also charged with illegal possession of a firearm. The rifle with which he shot the tiger, according to his cousin Sergei, had been left in the hut by their uncle Mikhail, to protect against bears. 

Both Odzyal and Zasukhin pointed out inconsistencies in the prosecution’s version of events, in particular concerning the number of bullets found in the tiger and the fact that no traces of the tiger’s blood were seen in the national park where Kyalundzyuga and Sigde were staying. Furthermore, according to Zasukhin, only a qualified veterinarian can perform a forensic veterinary exam, but the exam was performed by the general director of the Amur Tiger Center, Sergei Aramilev, whose degree is in biology. At the trial, Zasukhin called him a “biased party”: the tiger was hungry, and maintaining a sufficient food supply for tigers is the Center’s responsibility. When Alexander Zasukhin asked that an independent expert from Irkutsk be invited, the court rejected his request. 

In his petition to the court, Zasukhin pointed out that the forensic examination had been ordered and conducted in violation of requirements spelled out in Articles 195, 199, and 201 of Russia’s Criminal Procedural Code, since a forensic biological exam was ordered while in fact, comprehensive forensic biological, forensic veterinary, and forensic ballistic exams were performed. However, no forensic veterinary or ballistics experts were engaged: these examinations were performed by a biologist. 

According to Aramilev’s findings, Sigde shot the tiger on three occasions: once several days before the attack on his cousin; from approximately ten meters away on the day of the attack, hitting the animal in the neck; and during the attack, when he shot it in the head at least twice. After a polygraph test, Sigde told the police that he shot the tiger earlier because he was afraid and wanted to scare the animal. But his fellow villagers believe that Sigde was pressured into making this statement. 

Whether or not the accused shot the tiger before the attack, there was no evidence of poaching, Zasukhin said. “They are saying that [Sigde] was hunting. But to prove poaching, there must be evidence that the accused intentionally engaged in actions to locate, track, and pursue an animal for the purpose of killing it for personal gain. There was none of that.”

The defense attorney also said that, while the prosecution claimed that the tiger was shot at from ten meters away on the day of the attack while eating deer entrails, no such entrails were found in the predator’s stomach. 

In January 2025, Khabarovsk Krai’s Nanai District Court sentenced Sigde to two years and two months of correctional labor plus a docking of 10 percent of his salary to pay down the R2.6 million ($34,000) fine. He was also banned from leaving Nanai District for one year. On May 20, the Khabarovsk Krai court heard Sigde’s appeal and slightly reduced his penalty, shortening the term of correctional labor to one year. The sentence has not yet been implemented, since Alexander’s lawyer is preparing to take the case to the Supreme Court. 

“For The State, A Tiger’s Life Is 

More Important Than A Human One” 

Lyubov Odzyal believes that the bias toward finding Sigde guilty is tied to lobbying on behalf of the Amur Tiger Center, which was established by the Russian Geographical Society in 2013 at the behest of President Vladimir Putin and given the mission of preserving and increasing the endangered animal’s population.  Dmitry Kyalundzyuga agrees and sees the case as politically motivated.

“Just look at the makeup of [the boards of trustees and directors] of the Russian Geographical Society,” he said. “A simple Udege like Alexander doesn’t stand a chance in court, because the state cannot lose a case. Especially at a time like this – you can’t ‘rock the boat,’ you see? If times were different, there would be an international court involved. Someone would be going there to get at the truth.”

In response to our request for Amur Tiger Center Director Sergei Aramilev to comment on the charges made by representatives of the Association of Small-Population Indigenous Northern Peoples and the problems with the forensics exams he conducted, he said that the court found the accused to be guilty. “If someone disagrees with the actions of law enforcement agencies or anyone else, there are legal courses of action they can take.”

Dmitry Kyalundzyuga said he assumes that Vladimir Putin is being given distorted information about the Amur tigers that makes it look as if people are to blame for the predators’ attacks on them and that “the supreme leader may have good intentions regarding preservation of the tiger.”

“Can’t they determine the real reason? Why are they leaving [the forest]? They keep talking about preserving the tiger, but they shouldn’t be using indigenous people as scapegoats,” he said.

According to zoologist Viktor Lukarevsky, who has been studying big cats since 1984 (and Amur tigers since 2008) and now oversees research conducted at the Perm Zoo, the tigers are exhausted. They don’t have enough wildlife to feed on, and in a few years as much as 90 percent of the Far East’s population of this endangered predator may disappear.

Lukarevsky said that, while the African swine fever outbreak of 2021-2022 exacerbated the tiger’s lack of prey, the more serious problem is the deforestation of the Ussuri taiga and the relaxed limits on wild boar and deer hunting – specifically the Manchurian wapiti. According to Lukarevsky, efforts to repopulate the forest with wild boar have so far been ineffective, since most of them do not have immunity against African swine fever, and unless a vaccine is developed, there could be another outbreak. In some parts of Khabarovsk and Primorsky krais, the Manchurian wapiti are the tigers’ only prey. 

“How can we preserve them if we’re destroying their habitat? I’d like to see how you would live if your home was destroyed and you were deprived of the ability to work and find food? How would you reproduce, how would you feel? […] Meanwhile, wherever we turn, we’re being told that everything’s just great with the tiger,” the zoologist said.

Indeed, there are regular news reports that Russia’s tigers are “well protected” and that their population is growing, including in Khabarovsk Krai, and that Vladimir Putin is grateful to the Amur Tiger Center. 

Lukarevsky told us that tigers are, by nature, very cautious animals, and if they had enough to eat in the forest, they would stay away from areas inhabited by humans. But hunger has changed their behavior. He added that locals are angered by the Amur Tiger Center’s lack of attention to the predators’ problems, and this ultimately leads to hostility toward the animals: it’s as if, for the state, a tiger’s life is more important than a human one.

To prevent tigers from attacking people and livestock, Lukarevsky proposes a five-year ban on the hunting of wild boar and Manchurian wapiti. He also suggests releasing Sika deer from hunting preserves into certain areas and supplying supplementary food to both ungulates and tigers. As for the tigers, he said that injured ones should be sent to rehabilitation centers or zoos, while healthy ones should be fitted with collars that allow for tracking (in part, to know when they approach villages).

“He goes to the outhouse – and the next thing you know, he’s gone”

Sergei Kyalundzyuga flinches at the slightest rustle as he walks along a tree-lined path at dusk. “At first, I had nightmares about that tiger. I couldn’t sleep and had to take pills.” Like many locals, he doesn’t understand how he’s supposed to defend himself against tigers without being accused of breaking the law. “A person wakes up, goes to the outhouse – and the next thing you know, he’s gone.”

When he suffers from phantom limb pain, he goes to the mirror to convince his brain that the arm is really gone. By now he’s good at cooking and dressing, but there are still some basic tasks he can’t manage. 

“The hardest thing is tying on my children’s hats; the saddest is that I can’t fish anymore,” Sergei explained. 

He and his girlfriend have two children, two-year-old Katya and seven-month-old Zakhar, named after a friend who died fighting in Ukraine. They live on Sergei’s disability payments, R20,000 a month, as well as state child support. Sergei hasn’t been able to find a job. He says nobody will hire him after they find out he has only one arm. “No way, we don’t need disabled employees,” he’s told. 

Alexander Sigde moved away from Arsenyevo but returned in May when his wife had their second child. We were not able to determine whether or not he is employed; his relatives just mentioned various odd jobs. Alexander’s mother, Irina Sigde, told us that her son is plagued by bad dreams: “Because he can’t sleep next to the taiga; he tosses and turns all night. The psychiatrist prescribed some pills. My son says they don’t help.”

Lyubov Odzyal’s bitter conclusion is that every member of indigenous communities who imagine themselves in this story can see that they have fewer rights than the animals. “Everyone realizes that today, it was these boys,” she said, “but tomorrow I or someone else could be the victim: someone goes out to a forest hut and is attacked and killed by a tiger. And the media will write that he shot at it beforehand, and so the one who died isn’t seen as the victim.”

According to the 2021 census, there are 1,325 Ugede living in Russia’s Far East, and their numbers have been in steady decline for the past 30 years. As of 2021-2022, there were a few more than 750 Amur tigers, an increase over the past 30 years. Nobody is saying that this rare and beautiful beast should not be protected – but not at the cost of turning a dwindling indigenous people into its prey.