Godtering,
Fair questions deserve fair answers. Let's clear some elements here:
it sounds like a woman
It might, but it's not. Usually, the scammers from the former Soviet Union area are all males pretending to be women.
where is the scam?
I'd say innocent until proven guilty.
When someone is lying to your face is enough to make you wonder why they are doing it.
Why a real person with good intentions will claim to be someone "she" is not?
Abusing stolen pictures of someone else pretending to be you is a clear lie.
When the stolen pictures belong to a celebrity (and Dariya Ulanova is 100% sure a celebrity in the modeling area), the lie is quite stupid, because anyone doing a basic research will find the real owner of the stolen pictures used.
If "she" also told you that "she" got your email address from a "marriage agency" and you never signed a contract with any such agency that would be another element meant to make you ask yourself how "she" got your email address in the first place.
Check the header for the first email you received from "her": if the "from" and "Reply-To" show different names and email addresses, please ask yourself what real person will ever send emails that way.
Sometimes, the email address you can see in the "From" line belongs to an innocent third party having their account hacked and used to blast mass-mail messages similar to the ones posted here and to the initial email you received from "her". If you reply to the email, the reply will go to the "Reply-To:" email address and not to the "From:" email address.
If "she" is a smart scammer, "she" will not ask for money - "she" will lead the conversation in such a way that you will be the one offering to help "her" financially.
It can be the translation agency scam - pretending "her" English is not good enough and "she" uses a company to translate the letters to you. In this case, the translation agency will contact you asking to pay for the letters, because "she" has no money left to pay and "she" really wants to keep the contact with you because "she" loves you.
"She" might even buy a lottery ticket for you, and that ticket will win a huge prize - there will be a fake lottery agency contacting you and asking you to pay a fee before releasing the prize to you.
Another version of the scam story is that "she" will get a holiday because she cannot live without meeting you in person. "She" will pretend that "she" is traveling to Moscow, for paperwork and formalities, and rent a place to live there for a week or two, until the passport is ready. At that stage, "she" will need a certain amount of money as a proof that "she" can sustain "herself" financially while being abroad. "She" will tell you that "she" cannot leave the country without the money, but "she" will return the money to you when you meet "her" at the airport.
If you send any money, with the hope you will meet "her", another lie will come - usually that "she" got arrested because "she" tried to get out of the country an expensive object as a gift to you, without declaring it.
A more recent variation of the scam is that "she" has a "brother" or a "cousin" trading online and "she" will try to put you in contact with that person to help you invest some money for your common future.
The stories are the same for the last decade at least - the only difference is the email address and the set of stolen picture used.
You may not have the scam story in this topic, but you have plenty of these stories on the forum if you decide to read some of the other reports regarding Russian romance scammers we reported since 2012.
Back in 2016, Brian Krebs had an excellent article on his blog regarding Russian romance scams and how the scammers automated their work - you can find the details here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=41832For Russian dating scams, Yoshkar-Ola is what Lagos is for the Nigerian romance scams.
If that's not enough, type Yoshkar-ola + scam in Google, search and please read the results of the search before you decide if you want to believe in the good intentions of a scammer already lying to you.
