Arseniy Sokolov

Andrei Nazarenko was 21 when he was killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine. At his old school in a small town in the foothills of the Caucasus mountains of southern Russia, they solemnly unveiled a desk in his memory.

He was a qualified chef, and when he called his mother Oksana from the front, he talked of using those skills when he got back.

Now, though she's still grieving bitterly, Oksana's fulfilled his dream. Without him, she's opened a cozy little restaurant in his memory.

A rich noodle dish with meat, vegetables and spices. The business employs several people. Oksana couldn't have started it without the compensation money from the state. The average payout is about 14 million rubles. That's nearly 160,000 US dollars. All of Russia's families of the fallen are using the money to buy property and raise up the social ladder.

Economist Vladislav Anasemtsev calls it deathonomics.

That's law and human rights defender Nadezhda Nizovkina, speaking from Buryatia on the Mongolian border. It's a poor, remote region that's provided a disproportionately high number of men to fight and die in Ukraine. But she says the newly acquired compensation money isn't always very visible.

The Kremlin is determined that those who return alive from the front line will be treated as heroes. Vladimir Putin has even launched a scheme to fast-track selected veterans into leadership positions in local administration and businesses.

Applause It's still unclear whether that project will work. Existing local elites often resist admitting newcomers. But compensation payments have certainly catapulted a huge number of Russian families into a higher social class. If, according to rough but informed estimates, 150,000 Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine...

And if each of their families has actually received what they're due, that would mean the state has spent the equivalent of more than 2% of federal expenditure on such payouts over the past three years. Andrei's mother, Oksana, hasn't received her full payout yet. Like many other bereaved single mothers, she's battling her ex-husband in court over who gets what share.

But her new business, paid for with the Kremlin's compensation, has given her some comfort over the loss of her son.