Russians have created a new market, from intermediaries promising to locate missing soldiers to scammers hunting for compensation payments.
Within minutes of posting the advertisement, messages began to arrive. Some promised to find the missing serviceman through closed databases. Others claimed they could arrange his release from captivity or have him included in prisoner exchange lists. Some cited connections with generals and security officials. Among those offering help were also ‘military lawyers’, tarot readers, and fortune tellers who claimed they could determine a person’s whereabouts through cards—or even perform a ‘return spell’ to bring them home.
There was only one problem: the soldier did not exist. TV Rain (Dozhd) journalist Yekaterina Fomina, whose outlet has been designated a ‘foreign agent’ by Russian authorities and now operates in exile after being banned from broadcasting in Russia, created him using artificial intelligence and posted the advertisement in Telegram groups for relatives of missing servicemen to see how quickly people willing to profit from others’ desperation would appear.
Yet the experiment revealed not only the presence of scammers but also the scale of the problem on which they thrive. Between January 2024 and June 2026, the Ukrainian project I Want to Find (Khochu Nayti), established by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War with the support of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and Military Intelligence Directorate, received 200,084 inquiries concerning missing Russian servicemen.
That figure is comparable to the population of a small European city. Behind every inquiry is a family that does not know whether their relative is alive, being held captive, or already dead. According to the Coordination Headquarters, the real number of such families may be significantly higher, as many Russians are unaware that the project exists.
Since its launch, the Ukrainian initiative has confirmed that 3,939 Russian servicemen were being held in Ukrainian captivity. Of those, 2,519 were later exchanged. During the most recent prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia, 57 per cent of the returned Russian servicemen had previously been located by their relatives through the I Want to Find project.
When the death of Russian soldiers has to be proven in court
According to a joint study by the independent Russian outlets Meduza and Mediazona, published in May, approximately 90,000 Russian servicemen had been declared dead or missing through court proceedings in the absence of a body. The estimate is based on an analysis of inheritance cases, lawsuits seeking declarations of death or disappearance, and data from the Federal Chamber of Notaries.
Without official confirmation of death, relatives cannot obtain a death certificate, settle inheritance matters, or claim government compensation. As a result, courts are increasingly becoming the institutions that effectively answer the question of whether a person is alive or dead.
Researchers from Meduza and Mediazona included this category in their overall estimate of Russian military losses for the first time. As a result, the most likely number of Russian servicemen killed by the beginning of 2026 was estimated at approximately 352,000.
Importantly, more than 80 per cent of such court cases relate to the last two years of the war. Around 66 per cent concern servicemen who disappeared in 2024, while another 23 per cent involve those who went missing in 2025.
According to military analysts interviewed by Meduza and Mediazona, the increase in such cases is linked not only to the scale of losses but also to changes in the nature of combat. The widespread use of FPV drones, intensive artillery bombardments, and extensive minefields increasingly make the evacuation of bodies from the battlefield impossible. Under these conditions, court proceedings to declare a person dead or missing often become the only legal means of establishing their fate.
The problem of missing servicemen is not new to Russia. After the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s and during both Chechen campaigns, relatives also faced a lack of information about the fate of the dead, delays in official notifications, and years-long bureaucratic procedures. It was during that period that soldiers’ mothers committees gained prominence by attempting to determine the fate of servicemen where the state failed to provide answers.
The current war, however, differs in scale. Whereas such cases were once counted in the thousands, today they involve tens—and likely hundreds—of thousands of Russian families. For relatives, the issue has not only an emotional dimension but also a financial one.
How much is death worth?
As long as a serviceman is officially listed as missing, his family may receive only his regular military pay. One-time federal payments and regional compensation become available only after death has been officially recognised.
According to official Russian government data, depending on the region, the total compensation paid to the relatives of a deceased serviceman can reach 14–15 million rubles (155,000–165,000 euros). In many parts of Russia, that amount is comparable to a family’s earnings over several decades.
This is where what independent Russian media increasingly call the ‘hunt for death benefits’ begins.
The term refers not only to competition over compensation payments. It has gradually come to describe a broader market involving the search for missing servicemen, mediation in obtaining information about prisoners of war, legal assistance for families, and various schemes for accessing government payouts.
The cost of such services, identified by Yekaterina Fomina during her experiment and corroborated by accounts from mothers and wives of missing servicemen, ranged from 10,000 rubles (about 110 euros) to 24,000 rubles (about 265 euros). According to the journalist’s investigation, intermediaries and scammers actively used psychological pressure, persuading relatives to pay for supposedly secret information about the fate of their loved ones.
Can you marry for compensation?
At the same time, other forms of profit-making have emerged in Russia. One of the most widely discussed schemes involves so-called “one-day wives” and “black widows.” According to Russian media reports, women enter into sham relationships or marry men heading to the front in order to claim compensation payments if they are killed.
In April 2026, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, in an article titled How Scammers Profit from Payments to Russian Servicemen, described several such cases. In Primorsky Krai, according to journalists, Warrant Officer Alexander Polishchuk allegedly arranged sham marriages between servicemen and two local women. After the contract soldiers were killed, the compensation payments were reportedly divided among participants in the scheme.
In Khabarovsk, a group of six people was detained in February 2026 on suspicion of arranging sham marriages with military volunteers and gaining access to their bank accounts through notarized powers of attorney. According to investigators, the alleged damages in the case amounted to approximately 2.4 million rubles (around €26,000).
Journalists also cited a case from Kemerovo Region, where in March 2026 a court stripped the widow of a deceased serviceman of inheritance rights and compensation payments after determining that the couple had not actually lived together and that the marriage had been concluded shortly after the soldier signed his military contract.
Stories about sham marriages, court disputes, intermediaries, and scammers have all emerged around the same legal status—that of a deceased serviceman.
For years, Russian authorities justified participation in the war not only through patriotic rhetoric but also through financial incentives unprecedented for many regions: payments for signing a contract, serving in combat, and dying in service.
When a person’s death simultaneously becomes a legal fact, a claim to inheritance, and access to millions of rubles in compensation, an economy inevitably develops around it. Perhaps that is the central paradox of the ‘hunt for death benefits’.
Photo: Dreamstime.