A 24-year-old Russian woman recently got the shock of her life when learning that she had been married to an Egyptian citizen since 2022, about a year after losing her passport.

The unnamed St. Petersburg resident lost her passport in the summer of 2021, but despite declaring the loss to the local police, she never bothered getting her travel document reissued. She didn’t really need a new passport after that and she never imagined that the old one could be used by anyone else, but earlier this year, while trying to have a birth certificate issued for her baby, the young woman learned that her husband, an Egyptian man named Mustafa, needed to be present as well. She had never met Mustafa, let alone married him, but the Russian registry listed him as her spouse.

Photo: Nicole Geri/Unsplash

It’s unclear whether Mustafa himself found the woman’s passport, or if he bought it from someone on the black market, but according to recent news reports, the Egyptian national used the document to apply for a temporary residence permit in Russia, claiming that he was the husband of the St. Petersburg resident. The document contained a note about the marriage, which had allegedly taken place in January 2022.

After hearing the woman’s testimony and confirming that she had declared her passport lost three years ago and never met her Egyptian husband, a Russian court annulled the marriage.

This bizarre news went viral in Russia last week, even though it left a lot of questions unanswered, such as how the man was able to register his marriage to a Russian national using only their passport.