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"Every normal woman dreams of a family," she says in her thick Slavic accent.

Then a friend gave her an invitation to a reception in Kiev where she could meet wealthy foreign men, and showed her the European Connections catalog.

"I said, I'm 23 and putting myself in a catalog like a product? I don't think so," she recalls.

But her younger sister talked her into making the trip to the capital. After all, it sounded better than meeting someone at a bar. Plus, if she felt uncomfortable, she could just leave.

So Sasha joined her friend on the train to Kiev and found herself in the ballroom of a fancy downtown hotel, sitting by herself as her friend mingled with the foreign men.

"I saw many beautiful girls and I thought, what am I doing here?" she says. She was about to leave when she was told a man had asked to meet her.

Phil Lewis was the first American she had ever met. Even though she spoke no English, the two found they had a great deal in common.

"In only a few minutes, he showed me pictures of his children -- and usually men don't care about children," Sasha says.

After about 15 minutes of translated conversation, she says, "I felt at home. I looked in his eyes and I know nothing can go wrong."

They left the reception and spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other, with the interpreter's help. Lewis was able to brush aside his concern that she was too young.

The next morning, Phil invited her to visit him in the US and the two filled out an application for a fiancee visa. If things worked out between them, they agreed, they'd get married in America and make a home for her daughter, Lena.

"I wasn't happy with my life, but I had never before thought of leaving Ukraine," Sasha says.

She had to return to work, but later that week, he came to visit her in Sloviansk for an afternoon.

"Her family was very nice, real down-to-earth," says Lewis, who enrolled Sasha in local English classes while they waited for her visa to come through. A few months later, in the spring of 2000, they were married.

While a couple can meet and even pursue a courtship over the Internet, they must show proof that they've met face-to-face in order to obtain a fiancee visa. And, in the end, it's the woman's decision whether to leave her country for an older foreign man she may barely know. In the former Soviet Union, where an estimated one-third of the population lives in poverty and jobs are scarce, it's become a popular option for many young women. Especially since there's a common perception that Western men are more sensitive and supportive than Russian men. Sasha's friend who accompanied her to the Kiev social is now married to a man in South Carolina, she says. Some of her friends back in Ukraine would ask her how they, too, could meet American husbands.

Which is how Lewis became inspired to start his own Russian dating agency. He spent $6,500 to buy a website from Angelika, which gives him access to its database of more than 15,000 women.

Like other sites, his "Jewels of Russia" contains a brief profile listing the woman's age, height, weight, hometown, education level, languages spoken and other vitals. Most sites contain a few comments from the woman; a few are crass enough to list her measurements.

Some of the information may seem mildly dubious -- since when do so few European women smoke or drink? -- or gently manipulated for a Western audience -- most women assert they're Christian, but few specify Russian Orthodox. Those quibbles aside, much of the data seems reliable enough, as when a profile indicates that a woman speaks poor English or has children from a previous marriage.

The website is strictly a side venture for Lewis, who is a partner in an auto-repair business. He estimates that he spends a few hours a week on the phone answering customer queries about what it's like to marry a Russian woman.

"I enjoy talking about the subject and giving out free advice," he says.

He earns a cut every time a client orders a woman's contact information for $10, or requests to have a letter translated for $15. Sometimes, Sasha will act as interpreter on three-way phone calls, for which she charges $2 a minute.