Two young children stranded in a bear and wolf-infested forest for four nights in plunging temperatures were miraculously found alive.
Grisha, 12, and Vika Krepp, 10, clung on to their pet beagle dogs for warmth after they went missing during a fishing trip in Slobodo-Turinsky district in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region.
Following a huge search operation involving more than 650 people they were found ‘scared and cold’ but ‘cheerful’ that their ordeal was finally over.
They told rescuers that ‘wolves approached them in the forest, but their two young beagle dogs, who were with the children, scared off the predators’.
Vika and Grisha were taken to hospital where they were reunited with their mother Alfiya as they underwent health checks.
She was seen hugging the children in the hospital ward, telling Grisha: ‘I wasn’t worried. I believed in you! I knew you were fine.
‘I was confident in you, in Rocky, in Ryzhiy. Son, I believed you.’
Rescuer Igor Grekov said: ‘Four of us were riding on two ATVs when they were discovered. They didn’t panic. I was actually surprised.
‘We stopped and shouted every 200 metres. They heard us, but could not shout back, since their voices were already strained.’
They were eventually found four-and-a-half miles from the village of Burmakina, where they had gone missing near the family’s remote country cottage used in summer.
Their grandfather appeared four days ago after the fishing expedition but had recently had a stroke and was unable to explain clearly what had happened or how they got separated from him.
But rescuers think the Vika and Grisha walked tens of miles as they sought to find their way out of the forest.
Rescuers in dozens of search teams covered more than 800 miles searching for them.
There was a major scare yesterday when a bear was found that appeared to be guarding its prey and refusing to move.
There was such concern for the children that a murder case was officially opened and the Russian military was deployed.
It was an aerial thermal imager that detected the suspected bear.
One theory is that returning from fishing, the children had run ahead of their grandfather to get to the village to buy drinks, but had taken the wrong turn.
‘They told their grandfather “don’t rush, you will catch up with us”, but without realising it, they were going in a different direction,’ their mum said.
She added that as the search went on that she ‘blamed herself’ for leaving the children with their grandfather while she was working in the city.
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