Russian citizens who are failing to make alimony payments should be marked as such on dating websites, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov has suggested, in a proposal submitted to the Ministry of Digital Development.
The proposed measure comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year signed into law a bill that provides for the creation of a special registry of alimony debtors. The authors of the bill explained that it was needed to create an “effective legal mechanism” that would “increase the effectiveness of legal influence” on payment dodgers.
According to Davankov, additional measures are needed to further put pressure on debtors to pay alimony. He pointed out that the volume of alimony debt continues to exceed the volume of actual payments by several times.
“One of the effective measures that will speed up the payment of alimony by debtors could be the introduction of mandatory labeling of their pages on dating sites,” the MP’s appeal reads.
Davankov added that the introduction of this measure would also protect other dating-site users from establishing unwanted acquaintances with people who deliberately evade making such support payments.
“Owners of dating sites and services will be able to obtain information about such debtors from the public register of alimony debtors, which will appear in May 2025. Taking into account the development of technologies for recognizing faces in photographs, such marking can be added to the profile of the alimony defaulter automatically,” Davankov added.
When submitting the bill for the creation of the debtor registry in May, Deputy Minister of Justice Andrey Loginov reported that some 133,000 people are currently at risk of appearing in the database.
He added that the registry would act as additional moral pressure on debtors for their “unworthy behavior,” and specified that the people who will be added to the database are those who are already on a wanted list or are facing administrative charges for “chronic non-payment.”