Sokolova is, by all appearances, a “black widow”—a newly emerged slang term for women who ingratiate themselves with unmarried soldiers, especially those returning from the front for a rare leave of absence. After quickly marrying the soldiers, black widows see them off to the front line, where they are very likely to be killed in action, given Russia’s macabre tactics of sending expendable human waves into the “meat grinder,” as Russians call the front in Ukraine. When this happens, black widows cash in the grobovye—which roughly translates as “coffin money,” the common code for government payouts to the families of fallen soldiers. The sums can go as high as 13 million rubles (around $160,000), which represents generational wealth in poor regions where salaries hover around 30,000 to 40,000 rubles a month. Lonely, marginalized men like Khandozhko are ideal targets, because their widows won’t have to share the grobovye with other family members.

In October 2023, Sergey Khandozhko, a 40-year-old Russian man from a small village in Bryansk oblast, married Elena Sokolova, an employee at a military enlistment office in a neighboring village. The very next day, Khandozhko signed up to fight in Ukraine, despite having zero military experience, and was killed at the front four months later. A few days after his funeral, Sokolova claimed widow’s benefits amounting to at least 3 million rubles (around $37,000), even though she never shared a household with her late husband or had her marital status changed in her passport. Khandozhko’s brother, Aleksandr, successfully disputed the marriage in court, which ruled that Sokolova had en