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 entered a fictitious marriage “to obtain potential financial benefits in the event of the husband’s injury or death.” Aleksandr also claimed that Sokolova abused her authority at the draft office to expedite the process of getting Sergey into military service, did not visit him when he lay injured in a hospital, and was living with another man.
