A man has taken his ex-girlfriend to court to recover $600 he spent on wooing her including a romantic break to Crimea, she told Russian media.
The woman, Nina Zgurskaya, told media that their relationship had initially gone well with dates and gifts.
But she broke up with him while they were on holiday in Crimea because he failed to pop the question as she had hoped.
“It was discussed as a romantic trip, that he would propose to me — which didn’t happen,” she told Siberian channel CTC-Prima. “I got mad and left.”
When she got back to their home city of Krasnoyarsk, she found an even more unwelcome surprise: a court summons and a demand to return more than 40,000 rubles ($595).
“I received a court summons and found out he wanted to be reimbursed,” she said.
“We’ve been in court since October 2015,” she said. “He filed two suits against me, for money transfers to me and for the holiday. He had receipts.”
The man had both suits were thrown out and “is now appealing in another court”, she said.
She said the man, who was not named but was described as a lawyer, had argued that they were not in a romantic relationship and therefore she should pay her share.
She said she had provided photographs and witness statements to the contrary.
Siberian television channel CTC-Prima spoke to the man, who was shown outside the city’s Sverdlovsk district court.
“She can’t prove we were in a relationship, that it was a gift or a free trip, I never said that,” he told the channel.
“Do I have to give every girl on the street money and trips?”
The channel’s presenter commented to the camera: “I can only draw one conclusion: men nowadays are going downhill.”
A lawyer, Alexander Yevdokimov, commenting on the case to Business FM, said he believed the man was unlikely to win the case unless he had asked the woman to sign receipts.
“I think there’s little prospect of winning a case for the man — even if the situation has a certain music-hall or comic quality,” Yevdokimov said.
“In day-to-day life, this is quite a common occurrence.”
