A 36-year-old Russian soldier, Alexey Ivanovsky was collecting crabs on a beach in the remote Kuril islands when he was savagely attacked by a mother bear.

The skin on his scalp, back and buttocks was ripped away, one of his ears was torn off, and a leg needed to be amputated because of the severity of his wounds.

Ivanovsky suffered clinical death immediately after the attack but was resuscitated, and his ear was sewn back on.

He was flown 250 miles to regional capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk but died nine days later from a heart attack.

Onlookers who witnessed the attack threw stones at the bear in an attempt to scare it off and a man named Alexander, 37, suffered non life-threatening injuries as he tried to save Ivanovsky.