Two men from Kirensk who were picking cherries in the forest were killed by a brown bear, while their companion escaped and raised the alarm on September 16.

The Russian brown bear population has doubled in size in the last few years and attacks by bears on those living in remote villages have risen alarmingly this year, leading to calls by the authorities for a cull. Russia's brown bear population has more than doubled since 1990 rising to a total of 307,900 animals according to the Natural Resources Ministry.

The men were in a forest near the Russian village of Krasnoyarovo more than 80 km from the district centre, on the banks of the Lena, about 4,200 km east of Moscow. The bear attacked killing on men aged 65 and a second of 55.

"One person managed to escape and report the incident," the Irkutsk regional branch of Russia's Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Returning to the scene, a search party of police officers and hunters found the bodies and the bear came back. It attacked the group, but the hunters tried to unsuccessfully kill it before it ran off into the taiga. The hunters followed but were not successful in tracking it down and the bear remains at large. More police have been sent to the area and the search continues, Interfax reported the next day.

The police have advised residents of the region to be on their guard and avoid going into the forests unprotected. That is not going to go down well with the locals as summer turns to autumn. In Siberia fruit and mushroom picking is a favourite national pastime, verging on a religion with Russians.

Dozens of calls a day

Russia’s wild bear problem is getting worse as the bear population recover. The Irkutsk region has expanded its high-alert regime on September 17 from Bratsk, Ust-Ilimsk and the Angarsk urban district to Slyudyanka, the Taishet and Kirensk municipal districts and Nizhneudinsk district, Interfax reported.

Regional dispatchers have taking dozens of calls a day of bears active near inhabited places, who occasionally wander into settlements and gardens as they forage for food.

This the region has already issued 124 decisions to "regulate the population" estimated to be 305 animals of which 146 have already been shot.

The two berry pickers were not the first victims this year the district. A pensioner from the village of Alymovka, also in Kirensky region, died earlier this year after going into the forest for mushrooms, where she encountered a bear that killed her.

In the neighbouring Krasnoyarsk region, investigators said that a bear had killed a 66-year-old woman in her home in a remote village. Reportedly the bear simply walked into the building and attacked the women.

The Moscow Times, which has been keeping its own tally, counts at least 14 people killed by bears across Russia since the start of the year. Experts quoted by the paper say the number of non-fatal attacks is considerably higher.

The ministry is unmoved

Russia’s Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has downplayed the deaths and dismissed the idea that anything unusual is happening, saying. The this year’s death toll is actually down on normal. The ministry’s annual tally of fatalities hovers between 20 and 30 incidents, fatal and non-fatal combined, which means this year toll sits inside the normal range. The worst year on record was 2014 which saw 166 bear attacks - a figure nothing since has come close to.

The figures measure different things: attacks on people, preventive culls and sightings, but the bear problem seems to be getting worse this year. in Komi in the Ural mountains through to August 11, the regional natural resources ministry recorded 31 reports of bears entering settlements, compared with 21 over the same period in 2025.

In Buryatia, in eastern Siberia, beside Lake Baikal and bordering Mongolia, 144 pupils in the village of Novokizhinginsk were forced to switch to remote learning after a bear cub appeared near their school raising fears that its mother was nearby. And in nearby Selenginsk, authorities introduced round-the-clock patrols after a cub and bear tracks were reported at industrial water facilities.

The 146 bears shot in so far in just Siberia and dozens of daily sighting calls show the scale of the response. In total more than 530 aggressive bears have been killed across the entire country so far this year since the bears came out of hibernation.

A larger bear population can increase the opportunities for encounters with people, although the figures alone do not establish what caused this attack.

Officials have been pressing for greater powers to reduce the population, which is the polite formulation for a cull.

Wild bears is not a problem limited to Russia, as the bear population has been growing across Europe thanks to conservation efforts. Slovakia's environment ministry permitted the shooting of 126 protected brown bears in June 2025, after a rise in attacks on humans, having culled 58 "problematic" bears the previous year - a decision Greenpeace said used the bear population for political ends. Romania ordered a bear census in 2021 for the same reason, with environmentalists warning that the count would be used to justify hunting. Japan spent last winter arguing about whether its bear attacks were caused by food shortages or land use.

The Russian version has one local peculiarity. The bear is the national animal, the ruling party's logo and the subject of a decade of official photography involving Vladimir Putin in a wildlife reserve. That makes it a politically sensitive topic and a cull a slightly awkward decision.

Meanwhile the search continues near Krasnoyarovo for the rouge cherry-picker killed bear. The people of Irkutsk region which sits on the shores of Lake Baikal have been advised to stay out of the woods in the middle of berry season.