Ukraine wants to decriminalize porn: what is written in the bill

The Verkhovna Rada has registered a revised draft law No. 12191 on the decriminalization of porn. The document proposes to amend Article 331 of the Criminal Code and abolish criminal penalties for filming and distributing intimate videos.

A notice of the draft law's submission was posted on the website of the Verkhovna Rada. The draft law was authored by a group of MPs, including:

• Yaroslav Zhelezniak, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy ("Holos");
• Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Development Dmytro Natalukha ("Servant of the People");
• Member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence Solomiia Bobrovska ("Holos");
• Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Transport and Infrastructure Mykola Tyshchenko (unaffiliated);
• First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement Andrii Osadchuk ("Holos");
• Vladlen Nekliudov ("Servant of the People"), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Prosecution of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement, and others.

The text of the draft law and the explanatory note to it have not yet been published. However, according to Zhelezniak, if the bill is passed, criminal liability will remain exclusively for:

• non-consensual porn (pornography, deepfake)
• extreme porn (violence, animal, necrophilia)
• porn with children and distribution among children – for which the punishment is proposed to be even stricter.

The MP explained that the authors of the bill want to stop the practice of imprisonment for content storage in Ukraine. They also want to put an end to massive "secret purchases" in web-cams, whereas now "you can be punished even for storing nude photos on your own phone."

"This is the 'decriminalization of porn.' ... We are simply changing Article 301 of the Criminal Code so that adults are not imprisoned for 3-5 years for filming and distributing intimate videos. ... Pimping, involvement in prostitution, and human trafficking also remain criminal offenses," the MP emphasized.

At the same time, he noted, there is no question of legalizing porn. After all, "it is legalized, and we have been collecting millions of taxes from OnlyFans for a couple of years now."

As a reminder, in 2023, an attempt was made to decriminalize porn in Ukraine. However, the initiative was not continued then.

"This version is more conservative, but after more than a year of discussions with the committee and the working group, I am pleased to announce that a compromise has been reached," Zhelezniak summarized.

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