Why a Ukrainian Lawmaker Is Pushing to Legalize Pornography

As Ukraine contends with a war raging on its eastern front and Russian attacks on its cities, one lawmaker is working on something that he says could help the nation: legalizing pornography.

Yaroslav Zhelezniak, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s finance committee, is leading a push to ditch what he sees as outdated Soviet-era legislation that bans the possession, production and distribution of pornography.

Doing so, he said, would remedy what he and people making pornographic content say is an unfair contradiction.

Violations of Ukraine’s laws on pornography — Article 301 of the criminal code — are punishable by three to five years in prison. But Ukraine’s financial authorities have been collecting taxes from creators on websites known for adult content like OnlyFans.

That means that people who pay taxes on the pornography they produce can be prosecuted for it. “It’s absurd,” Mr. Zhelezniak said, especially “in the midst of a full-scale war.”

He also sees another benefit for Ukraine in changing the law. It would increase tax revenue, he said, since more pornography creators would be willing to declare their earnings — a boost for an economy struggling under the demands of a war that has ground on for over three years.

“We need these funds for our military,” he said.

Pornography creators say it is only fair that their work be decriminalized given that they are being asked to contribute to the tax rolls.

“Excuse me? Your ‘morals’ allow you to take our tax money?” said Karina, 30, who has been making sexually explicit content for five years. But “your morals allow you to imprison people for selling pictures of their own bodies?” She added in exasperation: “I have no words.”

Karina and other creators selling erotic images on OnlyFans who were interviewed for this article asked to be identified only by their first names, for fear of arrest.

Ukraine’s Article 301 is stricter than the pornography laws in most other European countries, the United States and Russia, and even prohibits sending or receiving nude photos between two consenting adults. Efforts to amend it have been in the works for years.

Mr. Zhelezniak spent more than a year drafting and gathering support for the bill to decriminalize pornography, an effort that assumed greater urgency in the fall of 2024.

That is when the head of Parliament’s finance committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, said tax authorities had learned that Ukrainians on OnlyFans were making “significant” income — $4 million in one case, $3 million in another. Those performers must pay taxes, he said.

Mr. Zhelezniak registered a draft law in November. It drew little attention until December, when Mr. Hetmantsev announced that 350 OnlyFans models had filed declarations to collectively pay around $1.6 million in taxes.

“This is very important money for the country in the war and we are grateful to the girls for their responsible position and contribution to the victory,” he wrote on Telegram. Mr. Hetmantsev said he supported the draft law because “the festival of hypocrisy, when society ‘morally condemns’ with one hand and takes money for the army with the other,” must end.

The bill — co-signed by 26 other lawmakers, including many from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s party — has already been endorsed by Parliament’s Law Enforcement committee. It now awaits a vote in Parliament, and Mr. Zhelezniak told a recent event that he has secured 210 out of the necessary 226 votes to pass. But not everyone is on board.

Yulia Tymoshenko, an opposition leader, has criticized the appropriateness of the bill in wartime. “What are you guys doing?” she said in Parliament. “Start living and working for the sake of Ukraine and for the people.”

The head of the National Police, Ivan Vyhivskyi, also opposed it, arguing that legalization would “have a negative impact on moral values.”

But Karina insists that her content is harmless. “I take photos of myself and sell them,” she said. “That’s it. I don’t hurt anyone.”

Karina said she got a letter from the tax authorities in October saying she owed money on $3.1 million in OnlyFans earnings from 2020 to 2022.

“I didn’t argue — I just did it,” she said. But even after paying $450,000 in taxes from her savings, she added, “I had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t going to end there.”

Weeks later, her house was raided and her laptop seized. Now she is under investigation on suspicion of violating Article 301, according to her lawyer.

“I’m completely disillusioned with my country,” Karina said. “It’s like we’re still in the U.S.S.R., where they pretended sex didn’t exist.”

Lesya Mykhailenko, her tax attorney, said several clients had moved abroad for fear of jail time.

The new law would not alter punishments for prostitution, human trafficking and images of child sexual abuse. But unlike those, Ms. Mykhailenko said, her clients’ actions are victimless — and involve consent.

“Either declare that this industry is immoral and ban it entirely, or acknowledge that it’s not and decriminalize it,” she said. “The government can’t have it both ways.”

Svitlana, 38, is another client of Ms. Mykhailenko’s and a friend of Karina’s. She started webcam modeling at 19, first with topless video chats. Now she records sex videos with her husband to post on OnlyFans.

“I’m not ashamed,” she said, adamant that what she does is her choice alone. She enjoys the work, its flexible schedule and the money. In a good month, Svitlana said, she can make around $100,000. She’s proud to have 630,000 fans on OnlyFans, who pay for content “they want to see.”

When she got a letter from the tax authorities saying she had 15 days to pay tax on about $4 million in OnlyFans income, Svitlana said she “happily” obliged to support the country. She has been donating to the military since the war began, Svitlana said.

The local tax office helped Svitlana file her declaration. And for weeks, everything seemed fine. Then Karina called to say that her house had been raided. “We’re in trouble,” she told her.

Svitlana said she feared her house would be next, so she and her husband deleted videos, removed sex toys — anything to hide their work. “We were scared,” she said.

A knock on the door finally came last month, Svitlana said, along with a warrant saying she too was now under investigation on suspicion of violating Article 301.

An estimated 3,500 OnlyFans creators are working in Ukraine, although it is not clear how many are making content that would constitute pornography under Ukrainian law. (Much, but not all, of the content on OnlyFans is sexually explicit.) On OnlyFans alone, Ukrainians earned $123 million between 2020 and 2022, according to Mr. Zhelezniak, citing data from the State Tax Service.

Decriminalizing pornography could bring in around $12.3 million in taxes annually, according to the Better Regulation Delivery Office, an E.U.-funded think tank in Ukraine. That would be enough to buy 24,000 FPV drones or support Ukraine’s anti-corruption court for a year, it said.

Instead, prosecutors brought nearly 1,400 cases under Article 301 to court in 2024 — up from 757 the year earlier — which the Better Regulation Delivery Office called an “inappropriate” allocation of resources during war.

It takes time to change minds, said Mr. Zhelezniak, 35. He recounted breaking out his iPad to give older colleagues in Parliament who thought pornography appeared only in magazines a primer on “what porn means in this century.”

While he can see the humor in what he’s doing and will sometimes joke about it with colleagues, the reality, Mr. Zhelezniak said, “is no laughing matter.”

Nataliia Novosolova contributed reporting.