Aside from an extensive paleontological record, Indo-European languages typically have several words for "wolf", thus attesting to the animal's abundance and cultural significance.

[10] Many Eurasian wolf populations are forced to subsist largely on livestock and garbage in areas with dense human activity, though wild ungulates such as moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar are still the most important food sources in Russia and the more mountainous regions of Eastern Europe.

[7] The largest on record was killed after World War II in the Kobelyakski Area of the Poltavskij Region in the Ukrainian SSR, and weighed 86 kg (190 lb).

[18] The extermination of Northern Europe's wolves first became an organized effort during the Middle Ages[citation needed], and continued until the late 1800s.

The grey wolf was present only in the eastern and northern parts of Finland by 1900, though its numbers increased after World War II.

[21][22] In Central Europe, wolves were dramatically reduced in number during the early 19th century, due to organized hunts and reductions in ungulate populations.

[23] The last free-living wolf to be killed on the soil of present-day Germany before 1945 was the so-called "Tiger of Sabrodt", which was shot near Hoyerswerda, Lusatia (then Lower Silesia), in 1904.

Wolves in the eastern Balkans benefitted from the region's contiguity with the former Soviet Union and large areas of plains, mountains, and farmlands.

[26] As of 2017, the IUCN Red List still recorded the grey wolf as regionally extinct in eight European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

The recovery of European wolf populations began after the 1950s, when traditional pastoral and rural economies declined and thus removed the need to heavily persecute wolves.

[31][32][27] Wolf populations in Poland have increased to about 800–900 individuals since being classified as a game species in 1976, now for more than two decades under legal protection in Annex V and II of the Habitats Directive.

The Polish scientists estimated that at the end of the 2018/19 monitoring year, at least 95 resident wolf packs would be west of the Vistula, more than at any time since data collection began in 2003.

Wolves in Slovakia, Ukraine, and Croatia may disperse into Hungary, where the lack of cover hinders the buildup of an autonomous population.

The number of wolves in Albania and North Macedonia is largely unknown, despite the importance the two countries have in linking wolf populations from Greece to those of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

Wolf numbers have declined in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1986, while the species is fully protected in neighbouring Croatia and Slovenia.

[26] Wolf populations throughout Northern and Central Asia are largely unknown, but are estimated in the hundreds of thousands based on annual harvests.

[50] In 2018 there was an estimated loss of 12,500 farm animals caused by wolf attacks in the French Alpine arc, with a population of about 500 wolves and several thousand livestock guardian dogs.

[45] Despite new measures to protect herds, there were 3,838 sightings of wolves in 2019 in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and compensation was paid for 12,491 detected wolf attacks.

[52] According to documented data, man-eating (not rabid) wolves killed 111 people in Estonia in the years from 1804 to 1853, 108 of them were children, two men and one woman.

Due to the abundance of game and many grazing animals still living in species-appropriate free range management, the wolves in Europe are not yet interested in children as prey.

[55] Numerous attacks occurred in Germany during the 17th century after the Thirty Years' War, though the majority probably involved rabid wolves.

Prominent among them was zoologist Petr Aleksandrovich Manteifel, who initially regarded all cases as either fiction or the work of rabid animals.

A report presented in November 1947 described numerous attacks, including ones perpetrated by apparently healthy animals, and gave recommendations on how to better defend against them.

[58] The majority of pre-Christian wolf-related traditions in Eurasia were rooted in Hittite mythology[4] with wolves featuring prominently in Indo-European cultures, sometimes as deity figures.

Nevertheless, wolves were admired for their ferocity and Germanic warriors often had the wolf as their totem, a trait later exported to other European cultures.

[5] In Lithuanian mythology, an iron wolf appears before Grand Duke Gediminas instructing him to build the city of Vilnius.

[61] Tengrism places high importance on the wolf as when howling, it is thought to be praying to Tengri thus making it the only creature other than man to worship a deity.