On March 12, a district court in the Russian city of Tyumen fined local resident Anastasia Alontseva 30,000 rubles (just over $365) under the administrative charge of “discrediting the army,” according to a report by the independent outlet Mediazona.
The fine stemmed from a livestream Alontseva broadcast on the social media platform VK, in which she spoke crudely about the benefits that could be gained if her spouse went to war and was killed:
“Just think what a f***ing great payoff [it will be]: kindergarten benefits, school benefits, a monthly allowance as a military spouse. F**k, we’ll really be living the f***ing life. We’ll go to the seaside. And then he’ll get killed there, knock on wood. We’ll buy a house or something.”
Alontseva also said she was considering sending her partner to war after first “registering the children under him.”
In the police report, officers described Alontseva’s actions as follows: “A Slavic-looking girl (a Russian woman) laughingly talks about how one can get rich off a serviceman by marrying him and sending him to the ‘special military operation.’”
In court, Alontseva admitted her guilt and said she had expressed her opinion “in the heat of the moment.” She said she deleted the recording of the livestream, but that she continues to receive negative comments.
The idea of pressuring one’s husband to join the army for the sake of the benefits package on offer appears to be widespread enough that, over the past year, at least two bills have been introduced in Russia’s State Duma to protect servicemen from so-called “black widows” — women accused of marrying men who are fighting in the war or are preparing to sign a contract in order to receive cash payments from the Russian state.
This past December, the nationalist LDPR party proposed punishing such women for entering into sham marriages with Russian soldiers. Then, in February 2026, a group of lawmakers from the Communist Party and senator Airat Gibatdinov proposed allowing the parents of fallen soldiers to have the deceased’s marriage declared fictitious within six months of the death.
