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Ukraine is begging for cash to keep buying arms, has a huge $27 billion budget deficit, and is heavily outgunned. So, to make ends meet, they're turning to an unlikely source of revenue: they want to legalize pornography and tax it to buy drones.
Under the proposed legislation, produced, distributed and possessed adult content will no longer be a criminal offense, punishable with up to 7 years of imprisonment as it is now. The bill, co-authored by Yaroslav Zhelezniak, first deputy head of Ukraine's Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Tax, and Customs Policy, has recently passed its first reading in the Verkhovna Rada and is awaiting the second reading.
Zhelezniak estimated that legalized adult content could bring in up to $25 million per year in tax revenue, enough to purchase 30,000 drones for the front.
"Everything that we get from this will not be spent on increasing finance or raising salaries of our defenders. All this money is now in the shadow economy and we cannot use it," Zhelezniak explained to The Washington Post. "I think that we are a mature enough nation to acknowledge that sex exists."
The new proposal would legalize an activity currently against the law, and in doing so bring in much-needed revenue to fund the war. Despite current laws in Ukraine which prohibit the production, distribution, and possession of pornography (which can attract up to 7 years in prison), Ukraine is currently one of the biggest producers of adult content in the world, and the number of creators from the country has risen dramatically in recent years, with many making a fortune on the platform OnlyFans.
According to data cited by the Wall Street Journal, Fenix International — the parent company of OnlyFans — found that roughly 7,900 Ukrainians earned more than $131 million through the platform in 2023 alone.
Ukrainian OnlyFans creators face a Catch-22: if they report their income, they risk being investigated for producing and distributing pornography. In the case of creator Svitlana Dvornikova, police raided her home, seizing $20,000 in cash along with her laptop and hard drives. In all, she paid almost $900,000 in taxes — which she said was equivalent to "hundreds of Russians killed on the front line." Eventually, Dvornikova and several fellow performers left Ukraine for other European countries in search of a more legally stable environment.
Dvornikova filed a petition on President Volodymyr Zelensky's website, calling herself a "conscientious taxpayer" and urging the government not to treat her as a criminal. The petition gathered more than 25,000 signatures in a week. Zelensky subsequently stated that parliament would consider legislation to legalize the industry.
Tax attorney Lesia Mykhalenko, who has represented more than 100 OnlyFans models, called the current situation absurd. "This is a victimless crime," she told the WSJ. "It unnecessarily burdens the legal system at a time when we should be focused on defending the country."
Not everyone agrees. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has come out strongly against the draft bill, warning it could turn Ukraine into a "pornographic hub" and raising concerns about child exploitation. The All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations also called for the bill's withdrawal, saying it "causes significant harm to the morals and health of Ukrainian society."
Ukraine relies heavily on domestically produced drones — FPV battlefield systems, long-range strike drones, naval drones, and ground robots — as Western arms flows remain uncertain and Russian electronic warfare continues to degrade supply chains. Kyiv is frantically searching for additional domestic revenue sources to sustain the war effort.
The bill still faces significant headwinds. Church opposition, Tymoshenko's political weight, and wartime moral conservatism could yet sink it before a second reading. But with a $27 billion deficit and no end to the war in sight, Kyiv is clearly willing to consider options that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
