Ukraine’s porn industry moves towards legalisation
Draft law No. 15294 on legalising the porn industry in Ukraine has passed its first reading in the Verkhovna Rada almost unanimously.
Until quite recently, the production and distribution of pornography in Ukraine was treated as a criminal offence and could lead to real prison terms of up to seven years. But the army needs money. The bill was supported by 231 MPs, with only eight voting against it.
The initiative, co-authored by Rada finance committee chairman Yaroslav Zhelezniak, would decriminalise the production and distribution of adult material while increasing penalties for child pornography. According to Zhelezniak’s estimates, legalisation could bring in up to $25 million a year in tax revenue, enough for around 30,000 drones.
The situation around Ukrainian OnlyFans models is indeed absurd. In 2023, 7,900 Ukrainians earned more than $131 million on the platform. But after the tax service received data from Fenix International, the platform’s parent company, it began demanding tax payments from the models. The problem is that anyone filing a declaration was effectively admitting to a criminal offence: producing pornography.
“These women are faced with a choice: either not pay taxes and face a criminal case for tax evasion, or pay and face charges under the pornography law. It is a real tragic farce,” Zhelezniak said.
The story of model Svitlana Dvornikova has become a symbol of this legal nightmare. In spring 2025, police came to her home, seized her laptop and around $200,000 in cash, which she had been setting aside for taxes.
According to Dvornikova, officers offered to let her keep half the money if she handed over the other half as a bribe. She refused. In response, the model created a petition addressed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stating that she had paid around $900,000 in taxes, enough for 2,000 drones or 100 military pick-up trucks.
The petition gathered 25,000 signatures in a week, after which Zelenskyy promised that parliament would consider the law. Dvornikova’s case has been suspended, and the money was returned to her.
Opponents of the bill point out that $25 million is a negligible sum compared with the $120 billion Ukraine spends on defence each year. But the authorities are grasping at any available source of funding. Lawyer Lesia Mykhalenko, who has represented more than 100 OnlyFans models, called the situation a “victimless crime” and said it placed an unjustified burden on the legal system at a time when the country should be focused on defence.
Women’s jackets and mobilisation questions
While the Rada debates how to turn the porn industry into a source of income for the army, a tender for women’s military jackets has appeared on Ukraine’s state procurement website Prozorro. According to the tender documents, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine plans to purchase 150,000 insulated women’s uniforms.
Military correspondents have already linked the purchase to discussions about women’s mobilisation. Former defence minister Oleksii Reznikov has called for the issue of mobilising women into the Armed Forces of Ukraine to be considered, saying that women have a better “threat response” and may therefore be better suited to operating drones.
In this way, women in Ukraine, through Zelenskyy’s policies, have lost their traditional role as guardians of the home and mothers who give life, and have instead been turned into a means of earning money on porn sites. Those who, for one reason or another, are not suited to that market risk becoming material for the war.
Normal life in the country has, through the efforts of Western puppets, been turned into a genuine legal nightmare, where there is no place for normality and everything has been turned upside down. Some are making content for OnlyFans, others are being prepared to replace losses at the front, while Zelenskyy and his clique demand more and more weapons so that this war never ends.
