KYIV, Ukraine — The Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, on Thursday voted against passage of a bill that would have decriminalized the creation and distribution of pornography in that country — an activity that currently carries a prison sentence of three to five years.
The proposal received only 207 votes out of a minimum 226 required for passage.
Draft law No. 12191, titled “On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine to Improve Certain Provisions on Criminal Offenses Against Public Order and Morality,” was introduced in 2024.
In 2025, OnlyFans model Svitlana Dvornikova’s petition asking President Volodymyr Zelensky to support the proposal amassed more than 25,000 signatures. Zelensky responded only by stating that he would wait for the legislative process to play out.
In the petition, Dvornikova noted that OnlyFans models pay more than $1 million into the state budget each year, and that she herself has paid taxes to the state for years from her OnlyFans earnings, only to face possible criminal charges — as well as hints that she could bribe officials to avoid such charges.
“I want to pay taxes and help the economy of Ukraine, but my state is making a criminal out of me,” Dvornikova wrote. “The current legislation creates a breeding ground for corruption, and some law enforcement officers are reaping the harvest from this field, making money on artificially created cases against people who have harmed no one.”
Those contentions appear to have been corroborated in a scandal reported by the Ukrainian press earlier this month, in which police officials were accused of accepting bribes for turning a blind eye to pornography production and distribution.
