The Price of Morality. 5 Million Hrivnas Spent from Ukraine’s Budget on Watching Porn

Every year, law enforcement agencies of Ukraine open hundreds of criminal cases involving the creation and distribution of pornographic content. How much does the state spend on ‘expert analysis’ of racy photos and videos, and how effective is the ‘fight for public morality’?

Article 301 of the Criminal Code (CC) of Ukraine provides for punishment for the import, production and distribution of pornography (with the participation of adults) in the form of fines and imprisonment for up to seven years. The law enforcement system makes considerable efforts to investigate such crimes.

According to the Office of the Prosecutor General, in January-August 2025, there were 1,464 criminal cases in Ukraine related to the creation of pornography. However, not every one of them reaches the court.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, courts have handed down 247 verdicts under various sections of Article 301 of the Criminal Code. During this time, 287 people have been convicted. Most (about 150 of them) were convicted for distributing their own content, while the rest were convicted for distributing someone else’s content. Most often, the distribution took place through websites, webcams or messengers.

Almost all the accused (with the exception of four acquittals) were found guilty by the court. However, this is where the severity of the state’s punitive system ends.

Although the court formally sentences most of the defendants to imprisonment, this is replaced by a probationary period. Only ten people should have been imprisoned, but these sentences are also at the appeal stage.

How much taxpayer money does the government spend on fighting for ‘high morals’? «Economic Truth» («Економічна правда» - leading Ukrainian media) analysed all the verdicts to calculate this.

In each such case, an expert examination is appointed: specialists review a large amount of  video and photo material, and the state pays for their work. On average, the cost of expert examinations within a single verdict (there may be several such examinations) is 11.3 thousand UAH.

The total cost of expert examinations from the year 2022 may reach 4.9 million UAH. However, the court transfers these costs to the convicted.

How difficult is the work of an expert? According to one court decision, an expert received about 15,000 hryvnias for 33 hours of watching videos, or about 500 hryvnias per hour. In other words, the state generously pays for watching pornography under the guise of ‘fighting for morality.’

Another expense item is "control purchases". This is a common practice among law enforcement agencies in cases related to Article 301 of the Criminal Code. Police officers or their agents, under the guise of ordinary users, purchase or order pornographic content, then record the fact of sale and detain the author or seller.

This approach raises questions. The fact is that often it is not about violent or exploitative pornography, but about amateur or private content that does not harm society. As a result, ‘test purchases’ often turn into provocation of a crime, creating room for abuse and pressure, especially in conditions where the law does not provide a clear definition of the term ‘pornography’.

However, ‘test purchases’ are not mentioned in every verdict. The «Economic Truth» counted only about 25 cases where the amount spent on such operations was specified. In total, this amounted to about 60 thousand UAH.

There are also less obvious expenses. Over the three years of the war, more than 1,700 court hearings with corresponding rulings have been held in cases under Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The state spends 20-25 billion UAH annually to maintain the judicial system, which holds about 8 million hearings. Thus, one court hearing costs the state an average of 3 thousand UAH.

Therefore, the costs of the judicial process in pornography cases alone amount to approximately 5.1 million hryvnias. This does not include the work of prosecutors and expert institutions, investigative actions, and the time of the parties involved.

14 years of court cases over porn DVD discs

The absurdity of the state’s fight for morality is well illustrated by a case that has been dragging on since the days when porn was sold on DVDs.

In the autumn of 2009, a man, his wife and his cousin decided to sell pornographic discs in Dnipro city. In November of the same year, law enforcement officers found out about this. They opened a criminal case, conducted searches, during which they found and seized 63 DVDs containing 287 explicit videos.

As part of the legal process, three examinations were conducted: in December 2009, January 2013, and May 2015. The expert examinations found that all of the recordings were pornographic works. The court involved representatives of Microsoft and Sony as third parties.

Finally, in November 2023, 14 years after the case was opened, the court of appeal found the defendants not guilty. As a result, the costs of all examinations fell on the state budget. However, their cost is not specified in the court decision.

In addition to the expert examinations, over the course of 14 years, the state spent money and time on the work of prosecutors, judges and the court secretariat involved in the case.

Taxes for crime

Despite criminal liability, the state officially requires people who earn money from distributing ‘spicy’ content to pay taxes on their income they receive.

In the autumn of 2024, the State Tax Service (STS) of Ukraine received data on the income of Ukrainians on the Onlyfans platform for 2020-2022. According to Ruslan Kravchenko, former head of the State Tax Service (now Prosecutor General), a total of 5,435 Ukrainians earned $111 million (UAH 4 billion 662 million) during this period.

Currently, the tax authorities are demanding payment of UAH 384.7 million in tax debt for producing pornography on OnlyFans. Moreover, it has already received data on Ukrainians’ earnings on the platform for 2023 and has begun sending out ‘letters of happiness’ to citizens of Ukraine demanding that they declare their income and pay taxes.

Law enforcement officers often accompany letters from the State Tax Service to creators. As «Economic Truth» managed to find out, in 2024, law enforcement officers, in particular the Bureau of Economic Security and the police, received a database of Ukrainian content creators on Onlyfans. The former did so legally, following a court ruling in a case of tax evasion by one of the Onlyfans agencies (an intermediary organisation that helps models promote content). The latter, presumably illegally: the relevant databases could be purchased for $400.

As a result, law enforcement officers visited the Ukrainian Onlyfans models who received the highest incomes with searches and opened proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code. Unofficially, they hinted at the possibility of avoiding criminal liability in exchange for a corrupt reward, as several models told «Economic Truth» journalists.

Law enforcement officials provide ‘protection’ not only to models but also to the organised porn business, receiving a certain percentage of the turnover in return. This was reported to «Economic Truth» by the owner of one of the Onlyfans agencies in the podcast ‘Chronicles of the Economy’ (to be published on 14 October 2025).

This may explain why, despite criminal liability for creating pornography and hundreds of open cases, the volume of such content being created in Ukraine is growing. Moreover, among those suspected and convicted by the state, there are almost no professionals who earn thousands of dollars a month.

Recently, one of the Onlyfans models registered a petition on the website of the President’s Office demanding the abolition of criminal liability for the production of adult pornography. She justified her request by stating that she had paid 40 million hryvnias in taxes from her income on Onlyfans.

Subsequently, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the petition, formally transferring responsibility for the decriminalization of porn to the Verkhovna Rada. A bill is awaiting consideration there, proposing to abolish criminal liability for the voluntary creation and distribution of pornographic content by adults.

According to the author of the document, MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak (Ярослав Железняк), its adoption in parliament is primarily hampered by ‘a lack of political will at the level of state leadership.’

Text by Yaroslav Vinokurov (Ярослав Вінокуров)  

The article was published on October 8, 2025 on the epravda.com.ua portal.