09.06.2025
20 min
1506
Ukraine is considering decriminalizing pornography, which would allow income earned by adult content creators to be legally taxed. Supporters of the proposed changes believe this could bring the multimillion-dollar industry out of the shadows and generate additional revenue for the state budget amid the war with Russia.
The adult content industry already generates significant revenue in Ukraine, although the production and distribution of pornographic materials can still result in criminal liability. This has created a paradoxical situation: the state requires people to declare their income and pay taxes on it, while the activity through which that money is earned can itself become grounds for criminal prosecution.
According to Fenix International, OnlyFans’ parent company, around 7,900 Ukrainians earned more than $131 million on the platform in 2023. Ukrainian tax authorities later obtained this data, after which some content creators began receiving demands to declare their earnings and pay taxes.
Given the scale of these earnings, Ukrainian lawmakers are increasingly discussing changes to the current rules that would decriminalize the creation of such content and bring a significant part of the industry out of the shadows. The relevant bill has already passed its first reading in the Verkhovna Rada and is awaiting further consideration.
One of the main supporters of the proposed changes is Ukrainian lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak. He has highlighted the legal contradiction currently facing Ukrainian adult content creators.
“These women either do not pay taxes and face criminal prosecution for that, or they pay taxes and can then be accused of violating pornography laws,” Zhelezniak told The Wall Street Journal.
The problem goes beyond the formal provisions of the law. Some Ukrainian adult content creators have reported police searches, equipment seizures and criminal proceedings. Some members of the industry have left Ukraine due to the risk of prosecution and continued working from abroad.
According to Zhelezniak’s estimate cited by The Wall Street Journal, decriminalizing the industry and fully taxing it could potentially generate up to $25 million in additional state revenue each year. By his calculations, that amount would be enough to purchase approximately 30,000 drones for Ukraine’s Defense Forces.
Ukrainian OnlyFans model Svitlana Dvornikova has become one of the public advocates for decriminalization. According to her, after she declared her income, law enforcement officers searched her home as part of a criminal investigation into the production of pornography. During the search, officers seized a laptop, storage devices and cash that Dvornikova says she had set aside to pay taxes.
In June 2025, Dvornikova registered a petition on the Ukrainian president’s website calling for the decriminalization of adult content production. In the petition, she described herself as a conscientious taxpayer and said she had paid more than 40 million hryvnias in taxes to the state over five years.
The petition quickly collected the 25,000 signatures required for official consideration. In response, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the issue should be addressed by the Verkhovna Rada, which was already considering relevant amendments to criminal legislation at the time.
The debate comes as Ukraine faces enormous defense expenditures. Domestic drone production has become one of the key elements of Ukraine’s wartime strategy, but scaling up manufacturing requires substantial budgetary resources. Additional tax revenue, including from sectors of the economy that currently operate largely in the shadows, could therefore provide another source of funding for the state.
Even a potential $25 million a year would not be a decisive amount for Ukraine’s defense budget. However, supporters of the reform emphasize that the issue is not only about money: decriminalization could eliminate a situation in which the state simultaneously requires people to pay taxes on income from a particular activity while prosecuting them for engaging in that same activity.
The proposed changes could therefore provide additional budget revenue, bring part of the adult content industry out of the shadows and establish clearer rules for people who already earn money by creating such content.
