During the war, investigators allocated 5 million hryvnias from the State Budget for watching pornography
As part of investigations of criminal proceedings into the facts of the spread of pornography, about 5 million UAH were spent from the State Budget on viewing photo and video materials during a full-scale invasion.
Production and distribution of pornographic content in Ukraine is prohibited by Art. 301 of the Criminal Code, which provides for punishment from a fine to seven years in prison. Only in January-August 2025, almost one and a half thousand criminal cases were opened under this article. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, courts have handed down 247 sentences, with about 150 people convicted for sharing their own content. Almost all the accused, with the exception of four acquitted, were found guilty. In most cases, the punishment is limited to conditional terms.
Each case is accompanied by an examination, during which specialists review a large number of materials, and the state pays for their work. The average cost of such examinations within one sentence is UAH 11.3 thousand, and the total amount of expenses from 2022 reached about UAH 4.9 million. After passing the verdict, the court obliges the convicts to compensate these costs. One of the decisions stated that for 33 hours of video viewing, the expert received about 15,000 hryvnias, i.e. approximately 500 hryvnias per hour.
Control purchases became a separate expense item. Law enforcement officers or their agents under the guise of users buy or order porn content, after which they record the fact of sale and detain the author or seller. It is often not about violent or exploitative material, but about amateur content that actually does not harm society. In such cases, controlled procurement often turns into a provocation of crime and creates space for abuse. Journalists counted about 25 cases where the costs of such operations amounted to approximately UAH 60,000.
Other costs are no less significant: one court session costs the budget an average of UAH 3,000. In general, for cases under Art. 301 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the state spent about UAH 5.1 million, not including the work of prosecutors, investigators, expert institutions, and involved specialists.
