On May 28, 2026, the Verkhovna Rada failed to muster sufficient votes to pass Draft Law No. 12191 "On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine Regarding the Improvement of Certain Provisions on Criminal Offenses Against Public Order and Morality."
It should be recalled that the draft law in its current version proposes to restate Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Importation, Production, Sale and Distribution of Pornographic Materials) in a new wording, decriminalizing — as intended by its authors — the exchange of content bearing signs of pornography between consenting adults, as well as the production of such content for the purpose of subsequent sale or distribution to an adult audience.
The legislative initiative itself, which has a fairly long but not particularly active history of public debate, emerged in 2024 after the State Tax Service of Ukraine began mass-assessing tax liabilities against content creators on the OnlyFans platform, who — having voluntarily fulfilled their obligations as taxpayers — received, as a bonus from the state, notices of suspicion under Article 301 of the Criminal Code, now as producers and distributors of pornographic material.
This — I would call it feudal — style of governance, in which each head of a separate state body "tends their own field," generating performance indicators without any need to follow a coherent state policy, revealed the complete absence of consistency and coordination in public administration: the tax authorities generated indicators by assessing tax liabilities, while the National Police generated their own indicators by prosecuting the same individuals under Article 301 of the Criminal Code.
The question of the legal status of those involved — as subjects of both tax matters and criminal proceedings — was left hanging in the air, since it was genuinely difficult to answer how the state viewed this activity: as economic, creative, or criminal.
Any movement aimed at resolving the dualistic approach to content creation on OnlyFans was purely inertial, representing a response to public debate, petitions that gathered the required number of signatures, or recent news about National Police officials providing "protection" to organized pornographic content production.
Draft Law No. 12191 was ultimately the response to this public demand.
If one looks at this draft law broadly, taking into account the state of social relations whose problems it purportedly aims to address, its significance extends well beyond the decriminalization of a particular act — touching on legislation in its current state and state policy as such.
Criminal proceedings under Article 301 of the Criminal Code are, without doubt, in their majority a vivid illustration of an approach whereby a law enforcement body must generate performance indicators, given that the actus reus of the offense in most convictions consists of sending photo and video materials in private correspondence between adults, accompanied by elaborate explanations of how this harms public morality — or even, strangely for a democratic society, formulations such as "in violation of the legislatively established requirements of public morality."
It is telling that a large number of convictions in these criminal proceedings were handed down on the basis of plea agreements, in which neither party wishes to prove anything in such proceedings, and the court accordingly need not assess the social danger of the acts charged against the accused.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned "legislatively established requirements of public morality" are clearly at odds with the actual state of public morality and current customs of private communication between adults, including intimate communication — in particular, the normalization of "distributing pornographic material" in the personal communications of adults.
It is telling and paradoxical that the state implicitly acknowledges this fact — as evidenced by the mass assessment of tax liabilities specifically against content creators on the OnlyFans platform and the active development of case law in this category of tax disputes. These assessments and disputes constitute a de facto recognition by the state that paid activity involving the production, sale, and distribution of content bearing signs of pornography is activity subject to taxation — while quietly overlooking those same "legislatively defined requirements of public morality" or even the "criminality" of such conduct, given that income earned in this way is income obtained through criminal means and may be subject not to taxation but to special confiscation within the framework of criminal proceedings.
Thus, the changing nature of both private and public social relations dictates the need to revise the current wording of Article 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
However, meeting contemporary social needs in this area is impossible merely by amending the disposition of the criminal code article — it requires comprehensive regulation of the relevant social relations. From this perspective, Draft Law No. 12191 does not resolve the problem; it is rather a reaction to a narrow social demand and an indicator of the legislator's lack of interest in engaging in genuine lawmaking.
First, decriminalization alone does not resolve the problems associated with the circulation of pornographic content, given that such circulation is directly prohibited by existing legislation — in particular the Laws of Ukraine "On Media" and "On the Protection of Childhood."
Second, equating the production and distribution of such content with creative, intellectual, or commercial activity for the purpose of taxation requires a comprehensive package of legislative amendments that could properly be called the legalization of the production and distribution of such content.
Third, when amending the Criminal Code, there is a need for a clear definition of the elements of the criminal offense and the actual criteria of social danger that characterize a given act as a criminal offense.
Indeed, while there are a large number of questionable charges under Article 301 of the Criminal Code, it must not be forgotten that some of these charges are, without doubt, acts that are socially dangerous — even though the actus reus of those acts corresponds to the current wording of the relevant article of the Criminal Code.
Among such charges, the following can be identified:
- A person producing photo or video material of a pornographic nature without the consent of another adult depicted therein, and distributing such material both by sending it to that person and to third parties.
- A person producing photo or video material depicting another person in a pornographic manner with that person's consent, and distributing it to third parties without the consent of the person depicted.
- A person producing pornographic material depicting themselves and subsequently distributing it by sending it in private messages to other persons without obtaining their consent to receive such content. Analyzing cases in which individuals were convicted under Article 301 of the Criminal Code, such acts are often rather chaotic in nature and can indeed cause psychological discomfort to individuals — often strangers to the author of such "mass sends" — however, such distribution to adults is not sufficiently socially dangerous to qualify as a criminal offense, although administrative liability would be appropriate in this case.
Each of these acts does correspond to the actus reus that Draft Law No. 12191 proposes to exclude — yet none of them can be said to lack social danger.
What is to be done?
Looking at each of these cases and at the structure of Chapter XII of the Criminal Code, it is evident that the object of the offense in question is the individual's right to respect for private and family life and the right to dignity — and therefore does not correspond to the generic object of criminal offenses provided for in that chapter, namely the protection of public order and morality, given that the harm caused by the offense is inflicted on a specific individual. The same applies to the intent, which is directed at causing harm to a specific person, not to society as a whole.
It should also be noted that Resolution 2412 (2021) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of November 26, 2021, "Gender perspectives and human rights implications of pornography," states that a large amount of pornographic content violates the fundamental human right to dignity, degrades and exploits vulnerable persons, and introduces the concept of "revenge pornography," containing a recommendation to Council of Europe member states to introduce criminal punishment for "revenge porn."
Likewise, EU Directive 2024/1385 on combating violence against women contains a requirement to introduce criminal law amendments addressing cyber-violence, including the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.
Therefore, completely removing this category of criminal offense from the Criminal Code would not only violate the rights of persons who may be recognized as victims in criminal proceedings, but would also complicate the alignment of national legislation with EU integration requirements.
The appropriate course of action in this case would be to establish this category of criminal offenses as a separate article, placed in Chapter III of the Criminal Code (Criminal Offenses Against Liberty, Honor and Dignity of a Person), given that the object of this offense is precisely the dignity of the individual and their right to respect for private and family life. An essential element of such a criminal offense must be the intent to produce or distribute pornographic content without the person's consent, while the aggravating circumstances may include the motive of revenge, bullying, reputational damage, or public humiliation of the victim.
The distribution of one's own pornographic images in private correspondence with other adults without their consent should be decriminalized, with a corresponding addition to the Code of Administrative Offenses of Ukraine.
Article 301 of the Criminal Code should retain the acts relating to the distribution of pornographic content to minors.
However, as can be seen from the latest legislative initiative — Draft Law No. 15294, registered on June 3, 2026 — the production, sale, and distribution of pornographic works, images, and other pornographic materials without the consent of the person depicted therein is included in the disposition of the proposed new wording of Article 301 of the Criminal Code.
However, this criminal offense appears in the same part one of the article as the sale or distribution of pornographic material to minors — meaning that the authors of Draft Law No. 15294 place criminal offenses with different objects of encroachment in the same part of the criminal code article.
Moreover, the proposed wording of Article 301 of the Criminal Code under Draft Law No. 15294 does not identify the motives for committing these offenses as aggravating circumstances — in particular the motive of revenge or bullying and similar motives — nor does it address the exploitation of a victim's vulnerable position or dependency.
Instead, the draft law sets out a rather unusual set of aggravating circumstances:
- Repetition of the offense;
- Commission by a group of persons pursuant to prior conspiracy;
- Receipt of income in a large amount.
While the first two are standard aggravating circumstances, the logic of the last raises a question: why is the social danger of an offense against public order and morality measured by the amount of money earned, and why does the amount of money earned determine whether the charged crime is serious or not serious?
The proposed wording of Part 3 of Article 301 of the Criminal Code under Draft Law No. 15294 also merits attention — specifically, the coercion of an adult to participate in the creation of pornographic works, images, or other pornographic material.
The first question regarding the proposed wording of Part 3 concerns its demarcation from the offense under Article 149 of the Criminal Code, since the recruitment and movement of a person using coercion for the purpose of, inter alia, use in the pornography business is precisely the offense covered by that article.
The second issue that draws attention in the proposed wording of Part 3 of Article 301 is again the absence of aggravating circumstances such as the use of violence, violence dangerous to life or health, threats of such violence, exploitation of the victim's vulnerable position, or material or other dependency.
Given that the sanction under Part 3 provides for imprisonment from three to eight years, in the absence of a clear definition of "coercion," the criteria for determining the appropriate sentence within that range will be highly subjective.
The new draft law also significantly increases the sanctions under each part of the article, yet the proposed structure of the article provides no specific criteria for determining the appropriate sentence within those sanctions.
Another weakness common to both Draft Law No. 12191 and Draft Law No. 15294 is the definition of the subjective element of the criminal offense without regard to the realities of both the media environment and law enforcement practice.
Specifically, while maintaining a blanket prohibition on the publication in media of any content bearing signs of pornography, the legislator leaves unanswered the precise content of the act described as "distribution."
The draft provides for two types of conduct: sale and distribution. Given the mandatory purpose of selling or distributing to a minor, sale — that is, the transfer of pornographic material in any form to another person (in this case a minor) on a paid or gratuitous basis — raises no questions as to the identification of this intent, since sale to a specific person implies that the subject of the offense is aware that the person is a minor, and one can accordingly conclude that there is a desire to sell the relevant material specifically to a minor.
An exception arises, for example, in the case of selling pornographic content through electronic platforms that do not allow verification of the buyer's age — such as through Telegram or live broadcasts on specialist websites where no age verification is in place and the person cannot know who the buyer of the content actually is. Resolving this problem without proper legal regulation of such electronic platforms and the provision of such services goes beyond the scope of criminal law and is not possible.
Distribution as such, however, implies providing access to the relevant content to an unlimited number of persons in any manner, which makes it entirely impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt the intent to distribute specifically to minors.
The distribution of pornographic content on specialist websites occurs either completely illegally or through placement on foreign platforms. Access to such sites by minors is in practice completely unrestricted.
Under such conditions, there is nothing to prevent law enforcement from serving a notice of suspicion on a person who posts content featuring consenting adults on, say, PornHub, since Ukrainian teenagers' access to that resource is in practice unrestricted.
It is worth noting that these risks are reflected in the opinion of the Committee on Law Enforcement Activities on Draft No. 12191, yet were taken into account neither in that draft nor in the new Draft Law No. 15294.
Thus, given the uncontrolled access of minors to pornographic content and the legislator's principled refusal to regulate the activity of producing and distributing such content, the "decriminalization of adult pornography" proposed by the drafts fails entirely to fulfill its intended purpose — on the contrary, generating additional problems in law enforcement practice.
With these criminal law deficiencies in place, the existing legislative initiatives fail to address the core issue — the social demand.
The actual social demand poses two fundamental problems for legislation to solve:
- the dualism in the state apparatus's treatment of content creators producing material bearing signs of pornography, who on one hand are taxpayers — albeit with the nature of the paid activity left unspoken — and on the other hand are persons committing criminal offenses, while the question of whether the previously taxed income was not in fact obtained through criminal means is conveniently bracketed off;
- the flourishing corruption in the sphere of illegal pornographic content production — since there is no legal production in Ukraine.
Analyzing the content of Draft Laws No. 12191 and No. 15294, it is evident that the legislator is not even attempting to resolve the actual problem or bring it into conformity with the current state of social relations and social demand.
Without recognizing the production of pornographic content as a phenomenon and expressing that recognition through legislative legalization, without a comprehensive approach to regulating the relevant social relations, the legislative initiatives described above are of minimal significance to society.
Even though tax disputes arising from the activities of OnlyFans creators in recent years have been the most widely discussed category of tax disputes, the state fails to take the next step and — despite the enormous potential for state budget revenues — through short-sightedness, is simply driving these taxpayers out of the country.
In this context, it is entirely telling that the conclusion on Draft Law No. 12191 issued by the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee examines the prospects of the draft law exclusively from the perspective of current fine revenues as penalties under convictions and potential fine revenues under convictions for Article 301 of the Criminal Code in its new wording, concluding that amendments to the criminal law may lead to increased revenues and expenditures depending on the sanctions imposed for identified offenses. It should be noted that the fine amounts in the proposed wording of Article 301 of the Criminal Code under Draft Law No. 15294 are indeed significantly increased.
In other words, the parliament's budget committee does not even attempt to analyze the possible consequences in terms of budget revenues in the event of a more comprehensive resolution of the problem that these draft laws purportedly address; it makes no mention of the existing tax disputes, no mention of the total volume of tax liabilities assessed against content creators on the OnlyFans platform alone, makes no reference to the critical need to legalize their activities — but instead points to the need to provide calculations, absurd in a democratic society, of the fines that convictions would generate.
In summary, Article 301 of the Criminal Code does indeed require a new wording — however, law is first and foremost a means of regulating relevant social relations; it must be directed at resolving the problems of society and of the individual, must not permit violations of fundamental rights or legal uncertainty, and above all must not be a reaction to a petition or a protest with cardboard signs, but must form part of a comprehensive state policy aimed at strengthening the state and upholding the fundamental rights of every person for whom that state exists. Accordingly, the existing draft laws require substantial revision, go well beyond the scope of criminal law, and any legislative changes must be comprehensive.
