‘They let him die and washed their hands of it’ Russian officials are refusing death benefits to a war widow left with 10 children, offering a family excursion instead
Russian widow Natalia Kuzmina was left to raise 10 children after her husband was killed in the war against Ukraine. Yet the state refused to pay death benefits, claiming he hadn’t died in combat. The family was forced to bury him in a sealed coffin, with neighbors covering the costs after officials declined to fund the funeral. When Kuzmina posted a video appeal asking for support, many commenters turned on her instead, blaming her for having more children than she could support. And while officials have repeatedly promised to help, family members and neighbors told the independent Okno project that they’ve done anything but. Meduza shares an English-language adaptation of Okno’s reporting.
In August last year, despite his wife’s pleas, 55-year-old Andrey Kuzmin signed a contract with Russia’s Defense Ministry.
“Natalia tried to talk him out of it for more than a year,” said a man from a neighboring village in the Tambov region. “They have 10 children of their own — five in school, some still in kindergarten, and one just an infant. Andrey also had two older children from a previous marriage. He simply couldn’t feed them all. There’s no work here.”
Relatives say Andrey only told his family at the last moment, just before leaving for training. “He left in early August,” recalled Zinaida, a relative who asked that her name be changed. “The last time he got in touch was August 23. The next day, he was dead.”
At his funeral, the local military commissar called him “a countryman who died in the zone of the special military operation.” The family was told nothing about the circumstances of Andrey’s death in the Kursk region — only that it wasn’t from combat wounds, so they wouldn’t receive any compensation, not even reimbursement for the funeral.
Natalia’s mother, Lyubov, said neighbors had to pool their money to bury him. The coffin was sealed; officials forbade the family to open it. “Natalia wasn’t in any state to insist,” Lyubov said. “She had a baby at her breast, nine more children running around, some to get ready for school, others to take to kindergarten — and then this news, that the only breadwinner was gone. She wasn’t given a single document from him, not even a military ID.”
The village buried him together. Natalia took part-time work as a teacher’s aide. “But it’s impossible to manage alone,” Lyubov said. “Before, Andrey could feed the kids who came home from school or tend the garden. Now everything falls on her.”
Last month, Natalia recorded a video describing her situation and the authorities’ refusal to help. The backlash was swift. “We were called all sorts of things,” Lyubov recalled. “We think even officials left comments from anonymous accounts: ‘Why did you have so many kids if you can’t feed them?’ Or, ‘Andrey went on his own, and if he didn’t die in battle, why should the state owe you anything?’ We realized we’d get nowhere with tearful appeals, so she doesn’t want to speak out anymore.”
After Natalia’s video spread, the Tambov regional government promised to “look into the situation” and offered to arrange an excursion to the city of Tambov for the children. Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, publicly ordered a criminal case opened into the refusal to pay benefits. Local officials who attended Andrey’s funeral promised “all kinds of support” for the Kuzmin family. And ahead of September’s elections, they repeated their pledges of help for the “soldier’s large family.”
“In reality, it’s not just no help — it’s negative help!” Lyubov said. “They cut the child benefits. It was 75 percent of the subsistence minimum, now it’s 50. Do we know why? Nobody explained! They promised help with paying for kindergarten fees, with school meals, with firewood, but in reality — nothing. They tell us to go around filing applications, but no one explains what she actually has the right to ask for.”
‘That’s how officials treat everyone’
Alexander, a neighbor who helped Natalia record her video appeal, said that when she visited the district administration, officials brushed her off: as a mother of 10, she was already “receiving everything she was entitled to.”
“That’s how the officials treat everyone,” he said. “Rotten trees along the roads and in the villages — we cut them down ourselves. […] There’s no street lighting at all, not a single lamp post. We’ve filed complaint after complaint, hoping they’d at least do something before elections. No response. Or if they answer at all, it’s just: ‘There’s no money.’”
Locals suspect that the authorities denied Natalia benefits for the same reason — because there simply wasn’t money in the public budget.
“There’s something very strange about that sealed zinc coffin,” said Ivan, another neighbor, who asked that his name be changed for safety reasons.
After all that grief and harassment from officials, Natalia shut down, but if I were her, I’d have insisted on an exhumation. How does it make sense that the commissar calls him a hero, and then suddenly, because he didn’t die from shellfire, his family gets nothing? And not a single piece of proof. If it was illness, then what illness? Where’s the medical report? Couldn’t the illness have been caused by service conditions? Besides, the Kursk region is clearly part of the war zone — the Ukrainian army broke through there. Where’s the confirmation that he didn’t die from wounds? They even awarded him the Order of Courage! In short, they took a man away from a large family, let him die there, and then washed their hands of it.
“Now she’s left alone with 10 children, the house falling apart, and those bastards are blaming her for ‘having too many kids,’” Ivan continued. “Meanwhile they talk about raising the birth rate! This is how you raise it? By humiliating mothers? Forcing fathers to go to the ‘special military operation’ and then cheating them? And he wasn’t the only one who went for the money. Plenty of men here signed up out of desperation.”
In early September, State Duma deputy Sergey Mironov appealed to Russia’s Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva on Natalia’s behalf. The Kuzmins, however, saw no change in payments. Instead, the Tambov regional government issued a press release:
The Kuzmin family receives social support measures in accordance with regional law. However, certain measures are application-based, and Natalia V. Kuzmina has not applied for them, though they have been repeatedly offered to her (including subsidies for utilities, assistance with medicines, a 70 percent discount on kindergarten fees, support for family members’ education, and discounted access to sports facilities and museums). This matter remains under the supervision of social protection coordinators.
Our only hope is you. Support Meduza before it’s too late.