Ukraine wants to decriminalize porn, the bill is already being registered in the Verkhovna Rada
Ukraine is preparing to decriminalize porn. This was reported in Telegram by MP, First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy Yaroslav Zheleznyak.
According to him, the relevant draft law “On Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine on Ensuring Freedom from Interference with Private Life” is already being registered in the Verkhovna Rada. It will appear on the parliamentary website in three days.
“The draft law was developed to decriminalize acts related to pornography insofar as they do not pose a public danger, as well as the creation or maintenance of brothels and pimping, as such that do not cause significant harm, which will strengthen protection against interference with private life,” the explanatory note to the document says.
Meanwhile, Yaroslav Zheleznyak noted that criminal liability will remain exclusively for non-consensual porn (revenge porn, deep fake), extreme porn (violence, animal, necrophilia), and porn with and for children. On the contrary, the latter category is planned to be toughened.
“That’s it. For everything else, we are removing criminal liability from Articles 301 and 302 so that the imagination of law enforcement officers does not generate 1000+ cases a year. To avoid the temptation to manipulate: pimping, involvement in prostitution and human trafficking also remain criminal offenses (these are separate articles),” Yaroslav Zheleznyak wrote.
The MP noted that the Law Enforcement Committee, BRDO and other civil society organizations, as well as government agencies, had joined the work on the draft law.
“Therefore, dear fellow deputies, the draft law is already in the SEDO, card number 1287728. I urge everyone to sign it by Friday morning. Let’s relieve law enforcement agencies from “control purchases” from webcam models. We have a lot of other ambitious tasks for them, even within the framework of our PIC investigations,” Yaroslav Zheleznyak emphasized.
Early last August, a petition to legalize erotica and porn in Ukraine gained the necessary 25,000 votes to be considered by the President. Subsequently, the author of the petition received an official response from Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said that there would be no immediate legalization of eroticism and porn in Ukraine, if at all.