Tugarin (Russian: Тугарин) is a mythical creature in Eastern European bylinas and fairy tales, which personifies evil and cruelty and appears in a dragon-like form.
[1] "Tugarin" as a corruption of "Tugar-Khan" (Tugor-Khan [ru] of the Turkic Polovets),[2][1][3] has been contested by an etymology from the root tug "grief".
[8] The flying wings are certainly a dragon-like trait, but some versions explain it away as a contraption made of paper, attached to his horse and not to himself.
[17][c] It has been suggested by some commentators that Tugarin represents the element of fire, since in some versions of "Alyosha Popovich", Tugarin's torso is covered with fiery snakes which he uses as a weapon, attempts to strangle Alyosha with smoke, throw fiery sparks at him, scorch him with fire, and shoot firebrands (головни́, or ignited logs of wood) at him.
Alyosha Popovich wins the duel, cuts Tugarin's body into pieces and scatters them across the field.