Western countries will send some of their most hardened criminals to serve sentences in special prisons in deepest Siberia.
At this rate, the species could be extinct in 6 years, according to latest shocking figures - but are the predators really in such jeopardy?
Here we go back in time and remember 13 remarkable moments of 2013.
Siberian woman sets fire to large haystack in revenge for being blocked on web.
Suspected serial rapist, a wealthy man with wife and two children, charged with 14 sex and blackmail crimes, facing up to 15 years in jail.
Tsarist inmates and Gulag victims were notoriously transported like cattle in packed carriages. Now it's different, as our pictures show.
New details emerge about 1928 odyssey that changed a dictator.
Paws were attached to underside of carriage in Zabaikalsk region.
Police launch probe into slaughter of protected two year old animal 'riddled with bullets'.