A Russian man, 'looking like a mummy,' has been rescued with a broken spine after a brown bear kept him inside its den for a month.

Named only as Alexander, the man is said to have been injured close to death when hunting dogs supposedly found him in a bear's den, a month after he vanished in a remote Tuva region, Russia.

After his rescue, the man was rushed to hospital where he was discovered he had broken his spine in a fight with the brown bear.

A spokesman at the health ministry in the Tuva Republic, a region in southern Siberia, told East2West News:

"We cannot confirm the case happened in Tuva."

"It was not registered by the Ministry of Health, the Emergencies Ministry, or any other official body [in the region]."

"Most probably, it happened somewhere outside Tuva."

Alexander reportedly told doctors that the animal had overpowered him and saved him as future food for approximately four weeks.

He explained:

"The bear preserved me as food for later. I drank my own urine to survive."

The Siberian Times reported that the man could only remember his first name. He couldn't recall his age or the surname. Doctors said that it was a 'miracle' he survived in with injuring for such long.

A group of Russian hunters explained that they found the man after their dogs refused to leave the bear's den and persistently barking until they arrived at the area.

When they checked the lair, they saw what they thought was a 'mummy-like' man. They rushed him to the hospital after discovering he was still alive.

The man is in an intensive care unit and has started recovering his mobility. He can move his arms slightly and open his eyes, according to local medics.

So far, it's not clear how the man encountered the animal or whether he was a hunter.

For a whole month, Alexander laid in the bear's den motionless due to the spine injury. The doctor's report said that his skin tissues had even begun to rot.

A similar incident happened earlier this year when a man's corpse was discovered inside a bear's den in Tatarstan, Russia. Investigators believed a bear killed the man, and his remains were stashed as a future meal for the animal.

Brown bears are known to entirely or partially bury animals they kill or the carrion they find, sometimes waiting for weeks before returning to them.

According to Ivan V. Seryodkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, bears do this to keep the prey hidden from other vultures as they wait for the meat to decompose, making it easier for them to eat.