Tourist poses with lion moments before being mauled

It's the moment when a smiling tourist posed next to a lion in his enclosure – before being manipulated like a rag doll by the animal.

Olga Solomina, 46, smiled while kneeling and touched the lion's mane for photography in a safari park in Ukraine.

But a few moments after taking the picture, things got worse when the animal grabbed his arm and "dragged" it. "I squatted and laid my hand on the lion as I did. I told him, "remembers Olga.

"The next moment, she grabbed my arm and dragged me like a rag doll."

"The other lions jumped up and I closed my eyes in fear of being torn by pride, it lasted several seconds which seemed to me eternal."

Zoo director Oleg Zubkov, who was nearby, came to his rescue by driving the lions away.

He then put her back in an open-sided vehicle to drive her to the zoo's office.

However, the couple is now stuck in a fierce battle to determine who is to blame and what happened next.

Olga says that despite her horrible wounds, her arm was simply wrapped in a towel.

: "He asked me not to call the police or an ambulance, saying that my injuries were not dangerous."

"At his office, his secretary was treating my lacerations with hydrogen peroxide.Then a vet came

" He injected me with lidocaine and stung the wounds, instead of I anesthetize them, they gave me a bottle of brandy, they gave me no antibiotics. "

She said that she was then driving but, during the 24 In the following hours, her condition worsened and she suffered a great deal.

When her temperature increased, she finally called an ambulance

and the doctors diagnosed her with a serious infection caused by the bite.

The spokesman of the hospital, Nikolai Vlasov, said: "The infection has entered his body through the teeth of the animal, a very dangerous infection. "Her condition has improved, but she needs more treatment.For the moment, we still do not know if she will regain the full use of her arm."

However, Oleg claims that the lion's attack was Olga's fault, alleging that she was drunk.

He said that the lion did not bite him

He told local media: "Obviously, the young lion did not like the smell of alcohol who came from Olga. "

The safari park would refuse to pay the 1,000,000 RUB (Sh1.5 million) compensation that the visitor demands, saying that she signed a warning accepting that the tour was dangerous.

Oleg previously made headlines around the world when he threw his slipper to a lion when he saw him intimidating a young lioness.

The incident was taken on camera and became viral.