Before the war, this female lived in deplorable conditions.
After the Russian invasion in Ukraine, his situation became dramatic.
Kiriusha, a 24-year-old brown bear who lived in disastrous conditions in Ukraine before being abandoned by his owner who left to fight, found refuge in the Netherlands thanks to a foundation and a zoo.
"Last weekend, the Bears in Mind Foundation picked up a brown bear in Ukraine who had been living in appalling conditions for 18 years," Rhenen Zoo in the central Netherlands said in a statement.
Het team van Bears in Mind is nogmaals naar Oekraïne 🇺🇦 afgereisd om deze beer een nieuwe toekomst te geven….
Word...
Posted by Bears in Mind on Sunday, April 10, 2022
"The situation of the bear had deteriorated so much during the war that the foundation did everything to evacuate it from the war zone as quickly as possible", a perilous operation, continued the zoo, where the animal is arrived Sunday.
Kiriusha had been living in a tiny cage in a hotel complex for years, according to the Dutch zoo.
The conflict in Ukraine aggravated the situation when its owner went into battle.
“Now that the war continues, the owners are no longer able to take care of the animal,” said Ingrid Vermeulen, director of the Bears in Mind foundation, which works for the welfare of bears.
“Food is becoming scarce and we are seeing these types of animals now routinely being left behind due to the imminent threat of war,” added Ingrid Vermeulen, quoted in the statement.
She had “barely room to move”
Kiriusha was a circus bear for the first six years of her life, before being placed in a hotel with a children's camp, where she lived in a cage, on a concrete floor "with barely room to move “, according to the Ouwehands Dierenpark zoo in Rhenen.
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After observing a period of quarantine, the animal will live with nine other bears who have been abused, in a forest managed by the foundation and the zoo.
The extraction of another bear is awaiting the agreement of the owner.
Several bears have already been rescued and evacuated last month to, among other places, Romania, Germany and Belgium.
Like other European countries, such as Belgium and Spain, the Netherlands has already taken in traumatized and undernourished Ukrainian felines.
In France, many initiatives and appeals for donations have been launched to help Ukrainian animals.