“They used to even sell farts”

How the Russian porn industry has changed due to the war

Russian models began to introduce themselves as Ukrainians, porn actresses from the Russian Federation are increasingly traveling to Serbia to film, and war-themed stories have appeared on “adult” websites. We tell you how the Russian porn industry has changed since February 2022.

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Ulyana met Nikita on Tinder, which was then still available in Russia. A 19-year-old student at the St. Petersburg State Institute of Film and Television earned money by tutoring, preparing schoolchildren for the Unified State Exam, but there was not enough money to live on, so Ulyana spent a long time on dating apps and went on dates “to eat at the guys’ expense.” Along with invitations to dinner, fair-haired and petite Ulyana, who looked younger than even her nineteen years, regularly received offers to act in porn or for escort services , but did not take such messages seriously. With Nikita it turned out differently. He called the girl a bunny - later Ulyana will say that this is how pimps address girls. In February 2023, Nikita invited Ulyana to try herself in porn.

Shortly before this, the student broke up with her boyfriend, the teachers she liked left the country due to mobilization, and her classmates at the institute did not like her. When students were asked to write an essay on the topic “The Person I Hate,” one of Ulyana’s classmates wrote about her. Left without a partner or friends, the girl agreed to Nikita's proposal, and they went to Murino, a city northeast of St. Petersburg that borders the Ring Road, to take photographs there.

“He said that we needed snaps (photos without makeup and in underwear - editor’s note), but without underwear,” recalls Ulyana. — It was an apartment in a high-rise building. I was scared to go in, but when I went in... There was a short woman photographer with curlers made of cotton swabs, she had children and a dog running around. We ended up taking these photos in five minutes.”

"I'm in porn because no one has ever loved me"

Ulyana explained that after the actress takes photographs, the agent sends them to clients. The clients are most often foreign porn studios that organize filming in Russia because it is profitable - the salaries of actors here are lower than abroad, and production is cheaper. Legal porn, NRX, Teen mega world studios continue to work with models in Russia, despite the war and sanctions . The agent approaches those actresses whose photographs are approved by the client with an offer to act in porn.

In Russia, according to Article 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the production and distribution of pornography is prohibited. In addition, in March 2022, the law was amended to clarify the methods for distributing such content. Previously, the law stated that it was a crime to distribute pornography if it was done through the media, including the Internet. Because of this rather vague wording, lawyers could build a line of defense on the fact that porn sites and other platforms are not registered as media outlets. For example, Advokatskaya Gazeta talked about the acquittal of a man who stored pornographic materials on a file sharing service. The Court of Cassation overturned his sentence because the man was not registered as a media outlet. With the introduction of amendments, this scheme no longer works; now the distribution of pornography is a crime if this is done through the media or the Internet. If in 2021 366 sentences were passed under Article 242, then in 2022, after the adoption of the amendments, there will already be 405. But “adult” content still continues to be secretly filmed: in apartments, small studios and other venues. As the Sobaka publication wrote, in St. Petersburg alone in 2020 there were more than 200 webcam studios.

Nikita sent out photographs of Ulyana, and a week later she received an invitation to shoot with a girl. The shooting took place on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, and Ulyana was paid 25 thousand rubles for the first day of shooting. The student decided that this was a very simple way to make money and continued acting. Ulyana chose the pseudonym Una Fairy.

According to her, the average earnings of a model in St. Petersburg depend on the type of shooting: for shooting with a guy, a girl is paid on average 10 thousand rubles per shift, for shooting with a girl - 7 thousand rubles, 3 thousand for shooting masturbation.

Actresses' fees have not changed over the past two years: studios still offer an average of about 10 thousand rubles per shift. The amount depends on whether the models are paid by Russian studios or European ones, whether the studio takes a percentage or not, as well as on the popularity and exclusivity of the actors. “I once had an order from a European studio, they paid directly, and so I received 40 thousand for a solo ,” recalls Ulyana.

Before the full-scale invasion began, Russian models were invited to shoot in European countries with the largest number of porn studios: Hungary, the Czech Republic and Spain. However, after February 24, 2022, Schengen visas became available to not all Russians, so foreign studios began organizing filming in Serbia, where Russian citizens do not require a visa, and porn production is legal there. In addition, many Russians have opened webcam studios in this country.

According to Ulyana, offers for filming abroad are received by models with well-developed social networks or a good reputation among studios. Just a month after starting her career in porn, in March 2023, Ulyana was invited to film in Serbia: “Here I was paid more than in Russia - 500 euros per day of filming. And after three filmings, I flew from Serbia to Budapest. There were guys from Spain, Germany and Hungary, they organized filming in Serbia, but were based in Budapest. There I was paid 1300 euros for my first working day. The first two weeks I worked constantly, then the filming became a little less.”

Former porn actor and founder of the online agency Cardo Crew with the creative pseudonym Stefan Cardo says that several Russian network projects have opened their branches in Belgrade, since it is easy to legalize such a business in Serbia: “Professional porn productions are rare here, but it happens that a team is brought here for a couple of weeks, since it is now difficult to obtain a Schengen visa models, especially those who have never been to the EU.” According to Cardo, it is not profitable to produce professional porn in Serbia, since it is more difficult to find models than in Russia, and the cost of maintaining a studio is high - but it is a legal way to do business and export models who cannot obtain Schengen visas.

Ulyana is sure that becoming a porn actress was her best decision: “It allows me to travel and make money doing what I really love to do. I'm in porn because no one has ever loved me. I’m writing an autobiography about this now, I want to reveal that we lack love, that’s why we go to porn. But not only for us, but for the whole world.”

Card with an Arabic name and expensive flights

Actress Victoria Korolkova (pseudonym Lizi Vogue) came into the porn business before Ulyana, she acted in Europe before the start of the war, and continues to do so now. In 2018, Victoria studied to become a seamstress technologist, and did not have enough money to live on. She posted an ad on Avito in which she offered her services as a model. Instead of photo sessions, Victoria was offered sex for money. She refused these offers - she considered the amounts too small.

“There was one offer for 30 thousand, then I thought about what I could try, but that time it didn’t work out. And later I had a solo shoot in Moscow. There the payment was about eight thousand,” recalls Victoria.

Her path is very similar to Ulyana’s career: filming in St. Petersburg, a trip to Hungary, travel. Victoria says that she still receives offers for filming and escorting abroad. She recently filmed in Budapest and received offers to film in Paris and Singapore. Recently, prices for flights and, in general, filming costs for Russian women have increased significantly, but at the same time, according to Victoria, she began to earn more - for example, for recent filming in Budapest, the girl received 800 euros .

Victoria, like most Russian porn actresses, has to bypass blocking of foreign bank cards for Russians.

“After 2022, payment comes only to a bank card. I know that you can cheaply make an Uzbek card for Russians and receive money for it. I made a card from the Belgian bank Wise for $200 through friends. The card was not issued in my name, it has some Arabic name on it, but I receive payment on it,” says Victoria.

They pretended to be Ukrainians to save their income

Since the beginning of the war and new amendments to the laws, it has become almost impossible to film porn in Russia, but it still remains a profitable business. According to Stefan Cardo, the sanctions primarily affected Russians who made money from the service for subscribing to exclusive porn content OnlyFans.

Model Militsa Kroshkina says that until 2022, it was quite easy to promote your account on OnlyFans. The girl began selling erotic content on the platform in 2019. In the first month, she earned $70 and considered this a good income - before that, Militsa posted nude photos on VK for free. By the start of the war, she had increased her profits 40 times and hired a team to help her promote. According to the model, until February 2022, subscribers were recruited through posts on Reddit. At the same time, Militsa clarifies that most often its audience was solvent Americans: “This is a complex social network, because you need to know when to post, what you can post and what you can’t, for example, some links. When you know how this system works, you get a lot of American subscribers who are willing to pay.”

In March 2022, the owner of OnlyFans, businessman of Ukrainian origin Leonid Radvinsky, donated $5 million to Ukrainian foundations. And already in April, OnlyFans froze payments to models from Russia and Belarus, and also prohibited users from these countries from subscribing to new models, renewing their subscription and watching paid content. Accounts registered with Russian passports were difficult to restore, but online services agencies figured out how to bypass the blocking.

“OnlyFans blocked everyone from Russia, there were cases of blocking in the occupied territories,” explains Cardo. — Most models resolved the issue by obtaining a residence permit in Turkey - this was a popular direction. That is, they uploaded a residence permit, and not a Russian passport, onto the platform to confirm their identity. Later, Türkiye stopped issuing residence permits normally, but the second option remained - to get a Thai license. This option still works, it works out to about $2,000 with flights, and many models do this.”

“As a model, I did not circumvent these restrictions. But as the owner of the agency, we select girls with documents with which registration on the platform is available. Less often, girls from the Russian Federation who go to obtain a residence permit and rights from other countries, this is a long and sometimes expensive process, for which the model herself is responsible,” says Yana, owner of the “10 million on Onlyfans” channel .

Many Russian models switched to alternative content subscription services - Fansly and Boosty, began posting content on the adult website Chaturbate and creating Telegram channels with paid access. However, income on these platforms is significantly lower . Alina (name changed at the request of the heroine) began working as a sexter on OnlyFans in 2022 - she corresponded with users on behalf of the model from her account, selling content that the model had filmed.

“My model at its peak had 50 thousand subscribers on OnlyFans,” says Alina. — They sold completely different content: photos, videos, erotica, triple anal, jerk-off instructions, they even sold farts. I managed to earn 10–15 thousand rubles on it in eight hours. This despite the fact that I received only 25% of total sales. But one day, after the platform began blocking the accounts of Russians, the shop closed down. Mailings to subscribers with offers to buy content stopped being sent, regular customers were indignant at the fact that they could not translate or contact the model.”

According to Alina, before the full-scale invasion began, models from Russia pretended to be Ukrainian to make it harder to de-anonymize them, and also “because Ukrainian women were more valued on the platform.” After February 24, 2022, this also became a way to retain falling income.

“We tried to squeeze at least something, wrote about support for Ukraine in the page description, wrote to users that the model was from Ukraine , in order to maintain audience loyalty. The Americans were very sympathetic and actively donated. They were not at all embarrassed that the model was answering them at the same time that Kyiv was being bombed. But this greatly affected our work: sexters from Ukraine regularly could not get in touch and we had to replace them. When, after the restrictions, we switched to Fansly, the money was ridiculous, I only received about 10 thousand rubles a month,” says Alina.

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“It feels like foreigners all support Putin”

It is difficult to accurately assess how income in the field of sex content has changed: Russian models, due to blocking of bank cards, receive payment in cryptocurrency, and their salary depends on the number of services for which they are filmed, popularity, as well as the interest they pay to platforms or online agencies. According to Stefan Cardo, such agencies can take up to 70% of earnings for promoting the model and helping to bypass blocks.

“In Russia, legal ways to watch porn have completely disappeared,” says Nikolai Chumakov, author of the podcast “Rule 34” and the telegram channel “That guy with a porn addiction.” — Previously, there were people in Russia who purchased PornHub Premium, plus PornHub itself gave away quite a lot of free subscriptions in competitions. In general, the culture of consuming pornography was gradually instilled in people, as well as consuming movies, music and games. Everything changed when the war started, and any legal way to pay for porn content disappeared. Plus, in Russia there were a certain number of people who donated to sex workers, and a certain number of people who bought content on OnlyFans. They, too, either completely lost the ability to pay for content, or switched to cryptocurrency. Plus, the culture of consuming porn via torrents is still strong in Russia. You could say that the culture of consuming porn for money is completely dead .”

But despite all the changes in the “technical” aspects, the attitude towards actors and models from Russia as a whole has not changed. Professional studios still accept Russian documents, and actors from other countries often support their Russian colleagues. “It feels like foreigners all support Putin,” says Ulyana. “Americans are very empathetic that we are poor and unhappy, we can’t start OnlyFans.”

“This is a very warm, close community, where people are not discriminated against simply because of their profession,” confirms the words of porn actress Nikolai Chumakov. — When discrimination or denial of the rights of sex workers occurs, other sex workers support and help. The porn industry is like Hollywood. If you look at interviews with those Russian porn actors who were able to leave and work in Europe, many say that they were given free housing there when the war began, some were transported for free, others were paid additional salaries. Sex workers in general are used to supporting each other because the rest of the world is against them.”

“Don’t jerk off, but go work at the Wagner PMC”

“A woman should be a slut in bed, a mistress in the kitchen and a protector at the front,” a video with this description in Ukrainian appeared in 2023 on several porn sites. The video shows how the girl’s dress is first unbuttoned, then she prepares food with the children, and after that she stands in the military uniform of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On the most popular porn site in the world - PornHub - before watching videos, users from Russia noticed an advertisement for the Wagner PMC in March last year. “Don’t jerk off, but go work at the Wagner PMC,” the lips said on the screen.

Just a few days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, PornHub trends were topped by the search term “Ukraine.” According to statistics published by the site, the number of searches for the word “uniform” increased by 243% in 2023, and the number of searches for the word “soldier” increased by 332%.

Porn videos with military themes have also appeared on porn sites and telegram channels with adult content: how Ukrainian or Russian soldiers have sex “with enemies.” Videos of similar content can be found by searching for “militia”, “Ukrainian”, or if you enter the name of the city in which the fighting is taking place. Most of the videos are clickbait. These are either actors in khaki uniforms that do not belong to any country, or simply old videos that users re-upload with a new title.

So, in March 2022, on porn forums, users began to discuss excerpts of a video in which Russian porn actress Katya Clover and Ukrainian actress Ariel (Lilit A) compete against the backdrop of the flags of their countries: who can experience more orgasms with the help of sex toys. As it turned out later, this video was filmed back in 2016 as part of the “orgasm championship”; the video is not connected with the war in Ukraine.

At the beginning of April 2024, photographs of a girl with a yellow-blue flag and the news that supposedly Ukrainian Olesya Prikhodko had won the sex championship were distributed on social networks. It was alleged that she was able to please 210 men, and already on April 9, the news was noticed in the “60 Minutes” program on the “Russia 1” channel. “This is why they tried to join the European Union,” said Alexei Zhuravlev, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Defense. However, users later found an uncropped photo, and the yellow and blue flag turned out to be Swedish. The girl in the photo herself - actress Nausi Love - on social networks she denied the presence of any Ukrainian roots.

But many famous porn actresses really did not ignore the topic of the war in Ukraine. Former porn star Sasha Gray was one of the first to speak out against the war. “To my brothers and sisters suffering in Ukraine: I am with you. To my brothers and sisters in Russia who do not want to be part of this war: I stand with you,” Gray wrote on Instagram immediately after the full-scale invasion began. Russian porn actress Eva Elfi, who left the country about three years ago, has repeatedly condemned Russia's aggression. “I don’t want to live there, pay taxes there, support this regime,” Elfi said in October 2023 in an interview with Irina Shikhman. After the invasion, Ukrainian models and porn actresses began to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Thus, porn actress Josephine Jackson (real name Yulia Senyuk) arranged a photo shoot with Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who had lost limbs. In the photographs, the actress in evening dresses poses next to military personnel in business suits. “This photo shoot was organized in order to create a calendar, the proceeds from the sales of which will be donated to our Heroes for rehabilitation and prosthetics,” the girl wrote on her Instagram.

“There is a tendency in the porn industry to reflect events around it in order to make the content relevant,” explains an industry source who wished to remain anonymous. Thus, in 2015, the number of requests for the tag “refugees” increased on porn sites in connection with humanitarian crises in the Middle East. And after the first outbreaks of COVID-19 in China, queries on the topic of coronavirus became popular. The experience of previous military conflicts also shows that at this time the number of videos with military themes on porn sites is growing. For example, on the Internet you can find videos about American soldiers in Iraq or Syria.

“A year ago, producers had a request for actors to wear clothes with Ukrainian or Russian flags,” says an anonymous source. — Moreover, it is important that there is no such thing as one country “f… t” another. This is just an attempt by the industry to be on trend.”

Aaron Lurie

Photos: Editorial “Layout”

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