'How I tried to fend off savage attack by bear that buried me alive in forest'

A post office worker buried alive during a savage bear attack in the Amur region has spoken about her battle for survival and declared: 'How beautiful life is'.

Natalya Pasternak, 54, was mauled as she was collecting birch sap in forests near Tynda and was only saved because the animal thought she was dead. It then sought to bury her and hide her, as if safeguarding its next meal, with the mother-of-three’s friend managing to race off to raise the alarm.

Since the horror incident last month Natalya has fought for her life in hospital having suffered terrible injuries. But she is now beginning to make a recovery and has posted a photo on her social network site with the caption: 'How beautiful life is'.

And in her first interview since the attack she has told how she watched the animal rip her apart, and feared she would die in the woods.

She said: 'When I saw the bear, I tried to escape. Then I remembered about my friend and stopped. That was the moment when the predator attacked me.

'The animal started to tear my legs apart, I tried to attack him with something I was using to collect birch sap. Then a quick thought hit me: 'If the bear takes my legs, I’ll be disabled for the rest of my life. It’s better to die then to be a burden to my children.'

Natalya had been with her friend Valentina Gorodetskaya, 80, and her dog in the woods when the bear appeared. The animal attacked the dog first before going for her.

She said she tried to hit the bear’s eyes and its neck, but it was too powerful.

'Valentina was also hitting the bear with a stick and praying,' she recalled. 'For some time the bear switched to her and hit her on her back. Then it started tearing me apart again.

'Valentina escaped and, despite her age, she made it to water cleaning facilities and called the emergency services. Despite such a nightmare I didn’t go mad. A prayer that I was screaming out loud helped me.'

When rescuers and the police arrived, the bear was covering Natalya with leaves and soil before it was shot dead.

Natalya, who previously worked as a baker in Tynda for 30 years, said: 'When I saw people, my first question was if they had killed the bear.

'I’m feeling well now and they’re helping me a lot in the hospital. I can now stand up and walk a little bit with the help of my daughter. It’s terrible to imagine what could have happened if it wasn’t for baba Valya [Valentina]'.

Natalya lives with her student daughter, Ekaterina, who will soon be a qualified obstetrician. She has two other grown-up children, Vasiliy and Yaroslav.

In the aftermath of the attack, gruesome pictures of the injuries she sustained were released to the public.

At the time, one of the first people on the scene was Sergei Ivanov, who ended up shooting the bear. He said: 'I looked and saw a woman, almost completed buried. Only her bloodied face and one arm was sticking out, but she was alive and breathing. She was conscious.

'She asked, 'Did you kill the bear?' Then she said, 'Dig me out'.

'I called to ambulance and the police. Most likely about one hour had passed since the attack to the moment I arrived. And all the while the poor woman suffered terribly.'