A recently released video shot in Siberia, shows a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy object moving behind snow-covered trees, that is purported to be a yeti, the Siberian equivalent of Bigfoot. (The actual video was not made available to the media.)

Purported yeti in vicinity of Kemerovo, Russia.

Igor Burtsev, Director of the International Centre of Hominology in Moscow, who released the video, explained that it was made by three boys, some 30km from the coal mining city of Leninsk-Kuznetskiy.

“They were walking about and noticed a chain of huge tracks in the snow. They got very inquisitive about the tracks and followed the trail, filming them on the mobile phone camera. They walked for a bit and got closer to the bushes – where suddenly they saw a Yeti, some 50 metres away from them. It noticed them as well and ran. The boys, scared, ran in the opposite direction.” Burtsev added that one of the boys, Yevgeny Anisimov, 11, who was filming the ‘creature’ – can be heard on the video shouting: ‘I am the nearest, I’m going to be eaten.’

According to Burtsev, the incident occurred in late January. He did not elaborate on how he received the footage.

Several sightings of the elusive creature have been reported in the Kemerovo region in the last few years.

Last summer The Siberian Times reported that fishermen in a boat on a river near Myski village, initially mistook distant figures first for bears and then people.

“We shouted to them – do you need help?,’ said fisherman Vitaly Vershinin. “They just rushed away, all in fur, walking on two legs, making their way through the bushes and with two other limbs, straight up the hill.”

He said: “What did we think? It could not be bears, as the bear walks on all-fours, and they ran on two…. so then they were gone.”

Last November hunters claimed they had discovered a yeti nest in the same area.

Regarding the video, Burtsev insisted: “It is a first time in Russian modern history that someone manages to film the yeti so clearly. I don’t doubt it was a yeti. It stood in a typical pose with its back slightly bent, and its long arms down. It is a real, not falsified, video.
He calls the footage, the “clearest evidence” so far of the creature’s existence.

Burtsev and other researchers believe the region is home to around 30 of the creatures.