CASE STUDY
Mykhailo Federov Minister of Digital Transformation for Ukraine and Oleksandr Komarov CEO of Kyivstar at the Ukrainian LLM signing
requirements, ensuring that sensitive national data remains securely stored and processed within Ukraine.
This local-first approach is especially critical for sectors such as government administration, healthcare, financial services and education, where data sensitivity and regulatory compliance are paramount.
By developing an LLM tailored specifically to Ukraine’ s needs, the project aims to provide institutions with tools that are both technologically advanced and aligned with national priorities.
Why Google Gemma?
The selection of Gemma followed an extensive evaluation process that assessed multiple technical, linguistic and economic criteria. According to Kyivstar, Gemma offered the optimal balance between performance, efficiency and adaptability. environment required for advanced model training and deployment.
The decision marks a significant milestone in Ukraine’ s Digital Transformation journey. By building a sovereign national LLM, Ukraine is laying the groundwork for artificial intelligence systems that are deeply rooted in its own language, culture, history and institutional context. The initiative reflects a broader ambition to ensure that the next generation of AI-powered services truly understands Ukrainian society rather than relying solely on global, generalised models that may overlook local nuance or context.
Building a sovereign Ukrainian LLM
As a strategic partner in the initiative, Kyivstar will take operational leadership of the Ukrainian LLM’ s development. The national language model is designed to capture the full breadth of Ukrainian dialects, terminology, historical references and cultural context. Crucially, it will also meet strict data sovereignty and security
" Choosing Gemma gives us the best balance between performance and resource use as well as high-quality training for the Ukrainian LLM," said Misha Nestor, Director of Digital Product Development, Kyivstar. " The model supports more than 140 languages including Ukrainian, features a context window of up to 128,000 tokens, offers multimodal capabilities and has a flexible architecture that can be adapted to different tasks."
Gemma’ s open-source nature was another decisive factor. By anchoring the national LLM on an open model from a global technology leader, Ukraine gains transparency, flexibility and longterm control over how the system evolves.
Strengthening international technology ties
Google was selected not only for technical reasons but also for the broader strategic context of the partnership. The decision reinforces the technological and economic ties between Ukraine and the United States – ties that were further strengthened by Kyivstar’ s listing on the Nasdaq in August 2025.
By collaborating with Google and leveraging its cloud and AI ecosystem, Ukraine is positioning itself within a global network of advanced AI development while maintaining national ownership over the resulting technology. www. intelligentcio. com
INTELLIGENT CIO EUROPE
15