Ukraine and the United Kingdom have signed a Declaration on Partnership in the field of artificial intelligence and declared their intention to act as close partners in developing next-generation AI-enabled armed forces.
This is stated in the Joint Declaration of Intent on a UK-Ukraine Artificial Intelligence Partnership, published on the website of the British government on Monday, August 24.
The declaration was signed by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Andy Burnham.
"We, the President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, meeting at a decisive moment for European security, and united in our resolve to shape the transformation of modern warfare, ACKNOWLEDGING the profound impact of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and network-enabled capability, and the strategic imperative for our two nations to lead in the safe, responsible, and operationally decisive application of Defence AI," (...) decided that " the United Kingdom and Ukraine should advance together — combining Ukraine’s unrivalled battlefield experience with the United Kingdom’s technological, industrial and research strength to build the AI-era armed forces our two nations, and our allies, will depend on," the declaration reads.
The document outlines a strategic vision for partnership in this domain, a cooperation model, principles of cooperation, a framework for leadership and oversight, and implementation milestones.
"We will act as close partners in developing next-generation, AI-enabled armed forces – leveraging our engineering, industry, academic capacity and defence organisations’ expertise to accelerate the development and deployment of AI-enabled military capabilities that strengthen Ukraine’s battlefield advantage and support the development of next-generation AI-driven Armed Forces powered by rapid innovation, autonomous systems, and network advantage," the document says.
"Our cooperation will proceed through three interlocking pillars: (1) Government-to-Government collaboration on co-developed models, secure data and compute pathways, and joint assurance; (2) Industry, coordinated through government-to-government arrangements to develop, test and deploy AI-enabled capabilities linked to agreed operational problem sets; and (3) Academia and Research, on autonomy, AI assurance, cyber security and synthetic data. Together, we will establish a model for developing and fielding AI-enabled military capabilities that others can follow," the cooperation model in the field of AI application is described in the document.
Regarding principles, it is noted: "Cooperation will respect the sovereignty of each Party’s assets and data; be underpinned by trusted safeguards on data, IP and export controls in line with the national legislation; combine agility with proportionate governance; and deliver mutual strategic benefit and NATO interoperability. By mutual agreement, we will extend the outputs of this Partnership to trusted allies and partners."
Regarding leadership and oversight: "We will steward this Partnership at the highest political level, with senior Defence leads empowered to drive delivery in line with the mutually agreed objectives."
Regarding the implementation framework: "We resolve to proceed on a pilot-first basis, giving priority to practical cooperation already underway. Further arrangements will be brought forward within the next few months, ensuring that this Partnership takes a tangible form from the outset and moves at the pace that our shared security requires."
It is emphasized that this declaration reflects "shared political intent and does not create legally binding obligations."
