Russia’s war payouts have spawned a grim side economy far from the trenches — and, in some cases, it runs through the registry office. In this episode of Eastern Express, TVP World examines the rise of so-called “black widows”— women accused of entering short-term marriages with soldiers before deployment in order to claim death benefits. Mark McNamee, co-founder of the Ukraine Business News Network, said the scale of the phenomenon remains unclear. “It’s hard to know the prevalence,” McNamee said. “Not a lot of ‘black widows’ will come out and say that’s what they’re doing this for.” Still, he argued the trend became visible because some women began describing it openly online. “It really started as basically a social media trend… a few women outspokenly, explicitly, publicly said, this is what they’re doing and why... Quite shamelessly, of course.” McNamee said what is most revealing is not the number — whether it’s “100… 1,000… 50,000”—but that the behavior is now discussed in public. “The fact that this is public... says something that it’s almost accepted within Russian society.” He linked that to what he described as limited sympathy for Russian troops. “We don’t see much sympathy for the soldiers, for the fallen soldiers within Russian society,” he said, adding that many Russians view enlistment as “this individual’s choice, basically out of greed to go to fight in Ukraine.” That same logic, he argued, shapes the atmosphere around suspected fraudulent marriages. “I think that creates sort of a permissive atmosphere in society that accepts women to take advantage of this situation.” McNamee also said the Kremlin has strong incentives to crack down—not for moral reasons, but because of cost. With “30,000 Russians taken from civilian life into the military every month,” he warned that if the practice spreads, it becomes “quite expensive” for the Russian government. He noted that corruption is a broader, deeper problem. “Anytime you have these massive disbursements… these are prime cases for exploitation, for corruption,” he said, pointing to reported schemes involving stolen pay and hidden deaths to avoid payouts.
