Operators

Ukraine to build national AI model on Google’s Gemma with Kyivstar

Ukraine to build national AI model on Google’s Gemma with Kyivstar

Ukraine will develop a national large language model (LLM) based on Google’s Gemma, with operator Kyivstar acting as strategic partner and operational lead alongside the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence under the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

The planned Ukrainian LLM will underpin future digital public services and enterprise tools, with the government aiming to improve service quality, automate workflows and strengthen digital resilience. The project will adapt Gemma specifically for the Ukrainian language, including improvements to the tokenizer, training on curated Ukrainian-language datasets, and the development of local benchmark tests to fine-tune future applications.

Kyivstar’s Director of Digital Product Development, Mykhailo Nestor, said Gemma was selected for its strong multilingual support - covering 140 languages including Ukrainian - and its 128,000-token context window, which enables the model to analyse long-form content such as 200-page documents. Flexibility in model size and demonstrated performance in other LLMs also factored into the decision.

Danylo Tsvok, Chief AI Officer at the Ministry and CEO of the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence, said building on an open-source model allows Ukraine to focus on training with domestic datasets to minimise linguistic and ethical risks.

Krzysztof Kaziow, Director of Customer Engineering CEE at Google Cloud, said the selection of Gemma highlights its balance of performance and resource efficiency, and reaffirmed Google’s support for Ukraine’s national AI initiative.



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