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Black Widows: Inside Russia’s Bleak New War-Time Side Hustle

A story has been circulating in Russia these past few days — the kind that tells you more about a collapsing society than any speech from the Kremlin ever will. It’s about money. It’s about war. And it’s about a group of young Russian women who have figured out how to turn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine into a revenue stream.

And yes, it’s as grim as it sounds.

Here’s the “business model,” if you can call it that:

Step one: find a target. Usually an isolated man — someone who’s never had a partner, or someone deep in alcohol or drug addiction. In other words, someone vulnerable.

Step two: seduce and rush the wedding. Because of the war, Russia now allows marriages to be finalized at lightning speed. That’s not a metaphor — you can meet a guy and be his wife before the vodka gets warm.

Step three: push him into the army. Sell him on heroism, a steady paycheck, maybe even the fantasy that fighting in Ukraine will finally make someone proud of him.

Then comes step four: wait.

If the man dies at the front, the state pays out what Russians morbidly call “coffin money.” The amount varies by region and rank, but it can reach the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars — life-changing cash in many places. And the widow also inherits his salary and benefits.

In short: war becomes a shortcut to financial security. Not for the fallen soldier — for the spouse who outlives him.

This ugly ecosystem blew up publicly when a real-estate agent was caught advising her female clients to use these tactics. The logic? The death benefits could help them make a down payment on an apartment. Imagine living in a country where predatory marriage-for-mortality is just another part of navigating the housing market.

Unsurprisingly, the people who support the war — and many families of dead soldiers — are furious. Some are now locked in court battles with these “temporary wives,” trying to prove the marriages were fake. In Siberia, one court has already ordered a widow to return her payout.

Meanwhile, Russian Telegram channels warn men about “black widows,” noting that some women have married — and lost — multiple husbands since the invasion began. Russian media has started reporting on it too, mostly in horrified whispers.
Lawmakers in the Duma are considering changes that would only pay benefits to spouses married at least a year. But even that proposal is running into resistance. Why? Because the government knows that punishing gold-diggers also means punishing genuine widows — and there are far too many of those already.

This is what happens when a society is hollowed out by war, corruption, and propaganda: human life becomes a commodity, and grief becomes an industry.

And for Americans watching from afar, this is a warning sign — not about Russia’s brutality (we’ve seen that), but about what happens when a government builds its entire national project on death and denial. The rot doesn’t stay at the front line. It spreads.
This is what a collapsing timeline looks like.
Brandon Weber

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