When Maria was told by the Russian military that her 59-year-old father had been shot on the front lines of the Ukraine war and had later died of his wounds, she was distraught and doubly shocked.

Not only was she unaware that her dad, Yury, had enlisted in the army, she was also informed he had got married just two days before being sent to fight.

“I’m still in shock and still can’t accept what happened,” Maria sobbed at the kitchen table in her small St. Petersburg flat. “At first, it felt like a dream. Even now, I sometimes wake up thinking I must have just dreamt it all. But it is really happening,” she added, tearfully.

The bride, whom Maria says she had never met or even heard her father mention, was 22 years his junior and had become her dad’s legal next of kin, entitling her to official compensation.

“I’ve never even spoken to this woman,” Maria, 37, said. CNN is using only her first name for privacy reasons.

“I don’t know what to say to her because I immediately suspected it was a scam.” CNN attempted to reach Yury’s widow for comment.

When a Russian soldier is killed in battle, his next of kin receive lump sums from the military starting from 5 million rubles ($64,000), compensation intended to reassure recruits that if – and often when – the worst happens, their loved ones will be looked after.

But there are mounting concerns in Russia that the benefit is increasingly being exploited by ruthless scammers – whom Russian officials and state media dub “black widows.” They dupe vulnerable men into sham marriages before seeing them off to war, then claim compensation if their new husbands are killed, cutting out other relatives.

Deathbed weddings

In recent months, Russians have been scandalized by multiple stories about recruits being allegedly honey-trapped into marriage before perishing on the front lines, or even getting married on their deathbeds.

In one widely reported “black widow” case last year, a nurse working at a military hospital was fired after being accused of marrying five soldiers in her care before they succumbed to their injuries in order to collect their death benefits.

It’s an abuse that has touched a nerve in a society that is increasingly alarmed at how the ongoing war in Ukraine – which the Kremlin still calls a “special military operation” – is taking its toll on life back home.

Against a backdrop of a worsening economy, fuel shortages, the ever-growing human cost and damaging Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil, condemnation of the scammers is getting louder, with mounting public calls for an official crackdown.

“The families of Special Military Operation participants need protection from brazen criminals, from so-called ‘black widows,’ from financial and telephone scammers and predators who target those who have received monetary payouts,” said Leonid Slutsky, a prominent lawmaker in Russia’s usually uncritical parliament, adding that such “crimes” were now reaching “serious proportions.”

Cynical advice

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin actively encouraged Russian recruits to get married, perhaps to bolster family support or to instil an additional motivation to fight. The pro-marriage campaign was also in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s promotion of so-called traditional values, amid demographic decline in Russia.

The authorities sought to facilitate speedy marriages for newly enlisted soldiers that would avoid the usual notice period, while state television broadcast mass wedding events arranged by local officials to further streamline the process.

Marrying a soldier, especially a soon-to-be-deployed recruit – for whom life expectancy on the “meat-grinder” front lines is now catastrophically short – has even been cast as a way onto the Russian property ladder.

In a video podcast recorded in the Siberian city of Tomsk last year, one Russian real estate agent offered astonishingly cynical advice to would-be property buyers.

“I’m a 30-year-old woman, but if I want to buy an apartment, where am I supposed to get the money?” the host, Darya Cherdantseva, asked.

“It’s simple,” the agent, Marina Orlova, responded. “Find a man who’s serving in the Special Military Operation and when he gets killed, you get 8 million rubles ($102,000),” she laughed.

“Lots of women are buying cheap apartments like that these days. It’s business,” Orlova added.

Both women were eventually prosecuted, handed long community-service sentences and forced to apologize to soldiers and their wives.

Widespread outrage

Russian courts have intervened in other high-profile cases, too, such as the very public spat between the mother of one Russian soldier from Ryazan and a local woman he met and married during a short period of leave from the front lines.

The soldier, Georgy Kostyrko, met Angelina Varyukhina online and married her 10 days later, before rejoining his unit.

According to Kostyrko’s mother, the new wife soon began posting photographs and videos of herself with other men on social media and her son filed for divorce. But he was killed in action before the paperwork was finalized, leaving her as the legal recipient of the death compensation.

Varyukhina offered a different account, saying accusations about her brief marriage were an attempt to “blacken” her reputation, and that she and Kostyrko reconciled after falling out. She said images of her online with other men were intended to make Georgy jealous.

Varyukhina’s next-of-kin status was eventually overturned in the courts, but the scandal provoked widespread outrage.

But there have also been shocking incidents where members of the Russian security forces appear to have been involved in orchestrating “black widow” scams, conspiring with women to send their newly recruited husbands on dangerous missions in exchange for a share of the compensation if they are killed.

In one case last year, Russian media reported on an investigation in Primorsky Krai, in the country’s far east, into an alleged scheme involving a warrant officer, a sergeant and a military accountant. The three were accused of recruiting vulnerable men, including orphans and people with no close relatives, and arranging marriages for them. The recruits were allegedly then sent to high-risk frontline positions where they were more likely to be killed in combat. There have been no public updates since on the case.

Back in St. Petersburg, Maria took CNN to her father’s old apartment, which has now been sold. She is convinced he was also scammed out of his home.

Behind a broken door, the new owners insisted it was a legitimate sale and that they had never even met the seller. But the money and the widow, like Maria’s dad, are now long gone.

“There is absolutely nothing left, and that is incredibly painful,” Maria sobbed.

“I don’t have a single thing to remind me of him, just the keys to his apartment, which don’t even work anymore, and that’s it.” (CNN)

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