Held Hostage by the Tigers

Story and Photos by The New Tab
Translation by Kat Tancock

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.