A terrified jogger escapes alive by shouting at the top of his voice to scare away a mother bear that was defending her two cubs.

Footage shows the bears stalking the runner after spotting him as a threat in woodland in Bashkortostan, Russia.

With her head held up high and her cubs scattering to safety in trees the mother bear clearly seems to have him in her sights.

The man, Ilsur, told how his blood froze when he heard a rustling in the bushes and two cubs came running straight at him.

He said: 'I froze, I didn't know what to do at all.

'I started screaming, yelling at the top of my lungs. They stopped about ten metres away, then started attacking me.

'I was screaming, one ran away, I didn't see where. And the second one then attacked too.'

After that, he said, the clearly angry mother appeared to protect her youngsters.

He added: 'I started screaming again. Then the bear moved away a little, and I started filming.

'My hands were shaking. I screamed, and at that moment the bear moved away, waited until the cubs went down, and then they left.'

Ilsur said that throughout his ordeal, all he could do was pray and think about his mother.

As soon as the bears left, he ran home, he said.