MOSCOW According to Aleksei Diumin, it happened late one night, far from Moscow. He was standing guard at a presidential palace where Vladimir V. Putin was sleeping. A bear approached. “He and I looked each other in the eyes,” Mr. Diumin told a Russian newspaper. Then the bear backed away slightly. “I opened the door and emptied my gun’s entire clip at his feet.” The bear retreated. Russia’s president was safe.

Mr. Diumin told the story of his encounter with the bear in February. Former bodyguards always have a stock of true-life tales for deployment at the dinner table. But Mr. Diumin’s account came only when he became a major Russian politician. That month, he was named acting governor of Tula province, an area just over a hundred miles from Moscow.

Tula is one of the capitals of the Russian military industry and has produced a significant proportion of Russian small-arms weaponry since czarist times. Tolstoy is buried on his estate in the region. But despite Tula’s rich cultural and political tradition, it seems Mr. Putin was unable to find a man in the province capable of serving as governor.

Tula’s leader seemingly appeared from out of nowhere, and his biography revealed that his main credential was 15 years of service as Mr. Putin’s personal bodyguard. Governors in Russia are formally elected by the residents of each region, but the complex nominating process and the election commissions, which are controlled by the Kremlin, allow the president to make anyone he wants a governor, including someone who had never set foot in the region, even as a tourist.