Ukraine is reportedly considering legalizing sex work to help its battered economy and fund the war against Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
In Ukraine, the production, possession, or distribution of pornography is illegal and is punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Despite this, the adult entertainment industry in the country has grown considerably but operates with the cooperation of a corrupt police force, the WSJ reported.
Ukrainian authorities have begun demanding taxes from adult content creators. However, anyone who complies effectively admits their involvement in criminal activity.
One Ukrainian lawmaker, Yaroslav Zhelezniak, is pushing for a bill that says legalizing pornography in the country would help boost the economy and could leave up to $25 million in tax revenues available to Ukraine’s war chest.
He predicts that the revenues could help pay for up to 30,000 drones.
Ukrainian MP pushes to legalize pornography to help fund war against Russia
"These women either don’t pay taxes and face criminal charges for that, or they pay taxes and get charged with violating pornography laws,” Zhelezniak, who chairs the finance committee in Ukraine’s Parliament, told the WSJ. “It’s a tragicomic situation.”
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, authorities turned a blind eye to the adult entertainment industry in the country. Recently, three regions of Ukraine received as much as $20,000 in bribes, according to the office of the Ukrainian General Prosecutor.
Two years into the invasion, OnlyFans’s parent company, Fenix International, found that 7,900 Ukrainians made more than $131 million on OnlyFans in 2023 alone, the WSJ reported.
Kyiv began sending letters to content creators who filed tax declarations that, unbeknownst to them, would be charged with tax evasion and illicitly producing adult content.
One of them, Svitlana Dvornikova, told the WSJ that while she was getting her daughter ready for school one morning, police seized $20.000 in cash, her laptop, and hard drives.
“They had a list of webcam models, and knew all their addresses,” Dvornikova told the WSJ. She said the officers offered her the option to bribe them to keep the matter quiet, but she declined.
Another woman told the WSJ that officers searched her apartment in a similar manner. She was later summoned to a court hearing, but did not go because she was scared that she would be forced to pay a bribe.
Many Ukrainian OnlyFans models, including Dvornikova, have since left the country or temporarily left to live elsewhere in Europe.
“This is a victimless crime,” Lesia Mykhalenko, a tax lawyer who has represented more than 100 OnlyFans models, told the WSJ. “It unnecessarily burdens the legal system at a time when we should be focused on defending the country.”
After a case was filed against her, Dvornikova filed a petition that was later featured on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s website. In it, she described herself as a “conscientious taxpayer,” and said that instead of marking her as a criminal, the government should be thankful for the near $900,000 she had paid in taxes, which she claimed was worth “hundreds of Russians killed on the front line.”
Her petition got over 25,000 signatures within a week, the WSJ reported. In turn, Zelensky said he would make parliament consider Zhelezniak’s legislation to legalize porn.
The bill Zhelezniak co-authored to legalize porn passed its first reading in Ukraine’s parliament in July and is due for a second reading.