A Russian teenager’s harrowing final phone call to her mother during a fatal bear attack has resurfaced, revealing the last words she spoke before being eaten alive.
Olga Moskalyova, 19, was walking with her stepfather Igor Tsyganenkov in the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky region of eastern Siberia in August 2011 when the pair were ambushed by a brown bear. The attack unfolded within earshot of Olga’s mother Tatiana, who had answered her daughter’s terrified call.
The teenager had initially managed to dodge the animal, but she then watched helplessly as a mother bear turned on Igor, crushing his skull and snapping his neck in front of her. Olga ran roughly 200 feet from the predator, yet the bear caught her, bit her leg, and dragged her to the ground.
Amid the chaos, she somehow kept her phone and dialed her mother multiple times.
When Tatiana first picked up, she heard screaming and what she later described as “the sounds of a bear growling and chewing,” She said she initially thought it might be a joke, but the terror in Olga’s voice quickly convinced her otherwise.
“Mum, the bear is eating me! Mum, it’s such agony. Mum, help!”
Tatiana added: “I could have died then and there from shock.”
In her panic, the mother tried to reach her husband, unaware he was already dead. She then frantically contacted authorities and relatives in the nearby village of Termalniy, begging them to get to the river and intervene.
The bear briefly left Olga, only to return with reinforcements. In a second call, the teenager was heard saying: “Mum, the bears are back. She came back and brought her three babies.”
Roughly an hour later, Olga placed one final call. Her last words to Tatiana were: “Mum, it’s not hurting any more. I don’t feel the pain. Forgive me for everything, I love you so much.”
Tatiana’s brother-in-law Andrei arrived at the scene with police about thirty minutes after that final call. They found the mother bear still feeding on Igor’s body, with Olga’s remains nearby. Emergency services summoned six hunters, who tracked down and killed the mother bear and her cubs.
Tatiana later reflected on who her daughter had been before the attack. “My daughter was such fun. She was so cheerful, friendly, and warm,” she said. “She had graduated from music school, and just days before the bear attack she got her driving licence.”
Both Olga and Igor were buried on the same day in 2011.
The attack occurred during what began as an ordinary summertime stroll alongside a local river in the remote Kamchatka Peninsula, a region known for its dense brown bear population. The mother bear’s decision to return with her cubs transformed an already brutal mauling into an extended ordeal that played out in real time over the phone line.