Helicopter rescue for Russia's 'loneliest woman' who shuns modern civilisation

The reclusive hermit was rushed to  Tashtagol hospital in Kemerovo region on the personal orders of the governor of Kemerovo region, Aman Tuleyev.

Clasping her icons and spring water, the devout Old Believer was flown for treatment after getting a message to the outside world that she was in pain in her legs, restricting her movements. 

Previously Agafya has refused to be flown out of the forest home built by her parents - where she was born - after they opted out of the Stalinist USSR claiming religious persecution.

A source said: 'Now Lykova feels better. Doctors removed the acute pain. It is planned that she will stay at the hospital for examination and treatment for a week.'

Her family fled into the wilderness in 1936 and when they were discovered living off the land after being spotted from the air in the 1970s, they had no idea World War Two had started - or ended. 

Today she admits that the extreme winter cold on her lonely farmstead is 'unbearable' - with temperatures sinking to minus 40C - but she has repeatedly refused offers to live in a village or town where she could be helped. 

Recently she has been bothered by wild bears and foxes seeking food. Despite this she is expected to ask to go back to the only home she has ever known - seen here in our pictures. 

Her little plot is located close to a river about some 150 metres up a remote mountain side in the Abakan Range, in south-western Siberia. She was the fourth child of Karp and Akulina Lykov and for the first 35 years of her life she had no contact at all with anyone outside her family.

It was in the summer of 1978 that a group of geologists accidentally stumbled across the family, with scientists reporting that Agafya spoke a strange blurred language 'distorted by a lifetime of isolation'.

Her father had taken the decision to flee normal civilisation in 1936 after a communist patrol arrived at the fields on which he was working and shot dead his brother.

Gathering a few meagre possessions and some seeds, he took his wife, Akulina, their nine-year-old son, Savin, and two-year-old daughter Natalia, and headed off into the forest. Over the years they retreated deeper into taiga, building a series of wooden cabins amid the pine trees.

When their metal pots had disintegrated beyond use, they were forced to live on a staple diet of potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds. The Lykovs subsided mainly on trapped wild animals and cultivated potatoes. They had no firearms, no salt and did not know how to make bread.

However a bad winter in 1961 killed off everything in their garden and they were reduced to eating their own leather shoes. The cold weather, and lack of food, tragically proved too much for Akulina who died.

Once the family was discovered they continued to live in the wilderness and, apart from salt, knives, forks and handles, they opted not to adopt any methods or items from the modern world.

Sadly just two years later three of the four children also died: Savin and Natalia suffered kidney failure and Dmitry died of pneumonia. Agafya's father died in his sleep in February 1988, but despite her age and the risks to her health she continues to live permanently at the little homestead.

Kemerovo region governor Aman Tuleyev keeps an eye out for her, regularly delivering her provisions including cabbage, flour, grapes and her favourite oranges.

Vladimir Makuta, head of Tashtagolskyi district, said: 'It is important for us to know she has everything she needs, that she'll live another winter and will have food.'

Previously she has been supplied with salted cabbage and a bag with dried fruit, flour, sugar, candles, matches. Millet and oats were sent for Agafya's chickens, also hay for her goats. 

Agafya is an Old Believer - a religious movement that splintered from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century, endured persecution both before and after the Bolshevik Revolution. 

In hospital, Agafya has received gifts of fruit from the Kemerovo governor along with a scarf, felt boots, and clothes.