Scientists have been trapped inside an Arctic research lab for two weeks - after polar bears 'besieged' it and ate their dog (file picture)
The five researchers have been camped out inside a weather station on the remote Troynoy island in the Kara Sea off Russia since August with 10 adult bears said to be circling the base.
One of the animals even spends its nights sleeping outside a window, preventing the Russian staff members from going outside.
Team members have run out of flares while one of their dogs has already been killed by a bear, Russian news agency TASS reports.
Russian authorities are sending out reinforcements, including dogs and new flares to scare the bears away.
But the voyage to the remote island is likely to take another month.
Killing polar bears is outlawed under Russian law, so Arctic researchers use pyrotechnics and rubber bullets to frighten bears away.
Vassiliy Shevchenko, from the Sevgidromet State Monitoring Network that owns the station, told Tass that the scientists had had to abandon some of their meteorological observations as a result of being besieged by the animals.
The five researchers have been camped out inside a weather station on the remote Troynoy island in the Kara Sea off Russia since August with 10 adult bears said to be circling the base
'Instructions were given to the Mikhail Somov expedition vessel, that will reach the station in about a month, to deliver dogs, as one of the station's canines was killed by a bear, and also flares and other pyrotechnical devices needed to scare the animals away.'
He said that bears tended to leave the island at the end of October when ice forms and they go in search of food.
So now we know where all those missing polar bears have gone? Global warming forced them to go to Russia, is that Putin's fault too?