Russian Model Banned From Internet Amid Putin's Porn Crackdown

In Russia, it’s legal to access OnlyFans, but that’s about where the legal protections end under Russian law. In fact, using OnlyFans in Vladimir Putin’s Russia could land you in prison. That’s what almost happened to OnlyFans model Sofya Vershinina. 

Vershinina, who is only twenty-one, appeared in a Moscow, Russia courtroom recently, facing charges of producing and distributing sexually explicit material online. It’s reported the young model earned about $400,000 selling NSFW material on sites like OnlyFans and messaging platforms like Telegram. She pled guilty, with prosecutors lobbying the judge to send her to a penal colony for three-and-a-half years. The judge decided that Vershinina - who uses the stage name Sonya Marmeladova - showed enough regret to be spared any time breaking rocks in a Russian gulag. 

Instead, the OnlyFans model was fined $60,000 and she’s now prohibited from using the internet at all for the next three years. 

While some in the states may argue that no one creating adult content should receive jail time, Putin’s crusade against porn and adult content is only intensifying. 

The Kremlin spins this as an enforcement of “traditional values”, but it’s censorship, and the sickening part is, this type of discrimination is not as far off as we may think here in the United States.

One of the key components of Republicans’ Project 2025 is “eradication of pornography”, and at the state level, the groundwork is already being laid out. States like Texas have already rolled out so-called “age verification” legislation, requiring adult sites verify photo ID for anyone who chooses to visit the site. Rather than handle terabytes of sensitive user information, many adult sites like Pornhub have opted to make their content unavailable to Texas residents. On the federal level, a sweeping pornography ban is unlikely to pass, but a growing number of states are at least considering online reforms that could eventually lead to more bans. 

As for Vershinina, she’s not alone, but she’s (so far) the luckiest. Other young OnlyFans stars like Anastasia Ovsyannikova and Diana Shurygina have also been arrested and are currently under house arrest awaiting trial. They both face a six year sentence if convicted. Shurygina became known for her 2016 appearance on a Russian television show “Let Them Talk”. A German adult producer, Ludwig Krichker was also detained and is under house arrest. 

While Putin claims to be enforcing this rule uniformly against male and female adult models, the data disproves him. In 2022, pro-feminist artist Yulia Tsvetkova was jailed and charged with creation of pornography for her artwork aimed at positively portraying the female body. She went on hunger strike while in prison and was eventually acquitted, fleeing the country shortly afterwards. Tsvetkova gained widespread recognition in feminist communities for her work. 

In nearby Ukraine, where pornography is illegal (and police corruption runs rampant), creators who have so much as dabbled in adult content are getting arrested at alarmingly high numbers. Producing adult content is illegal in Ukraine and police officers have been prosecuting pornography cases as a quick way to up their closure rates. Even content creators who are no longer active are afraid they’ll be arrested and ordered to confess or pay a bribe. 

As Putin openly discriminates against adult content creators, it’s worth taking the time to ask ourselves, “how much bigger will this get?” With OnlyFans creators losing access to their bank accounts and Meta unilaterally deciding to disallow OnlyFans links, the crackdown on adult content might be closer to the United States than we think.