Agafya Lykova, 63, has lived in the taiga of the neighboring Siberian republic of Khakasia since 1937, when her father took his family into the wilderness to "purge their souls of the modern world."
The woman wrote a letter to Kemerovo Region Governor Aman Tuleyev last week saying that she was unable to move her right arm, and her left arm hurt.
Tuleyev first met Lykova in 1997 during a trip to the region and the two have been exchanging letters ever since. This is not the first time he has ordered that aid be sent to the woman.
Lykova also said in her letter that, "I hardly have any firewood and I have been forced to move to a smaller house where it is cold and even the water freezes."
Firewood, medicine, flour, animal feed and ten chickens were delivered to Agafya's taiga home by helicopter on Thursday. A local doctor and Agafya's cousin Anna Zhukova also paid a visit to the hermit.
The Old Believers split from the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th century in a dispute over liturgical practices, including a disagreement over the correct number of fingers, two or three, to cross oneself with. They also consider shaving to be a grave sin.
The Lykovs lived for decades in self-imposed isolation, without any modern conveniences, some 300 km (186 miles) away from civilization. They were eventually discovered by a group of Soviet geologists in 1978, but resisted efforts to return them to modern society.
