Ukraine and the United Kingdom have signed a joint declaration on artificial intelligence partnership covering the development and deployment of AI-enabled military capabilities, according to the Ukrainian presidency’s account of talks in Kyiv between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Andy Burnham.
It formalises a direction British defence policy has already been moving in, having committed £2bn to an AI combat laboratory for the British Army.
“We will work together to build next-generation Armed Forces and accelerate development and deployment of AI-enabled military capabilities,” Zelenskyy said. Neither side has published the text of the declaration or indicated what funding, if any, sits behind it.
The visit was Burnham’s first foreign trip since becoming prime minister, which gives the AI component more weight than a routine bilateral would carry.
Ukraine has spent four years turning battlefield necessity into a software industry, and Britain is the partner most explicitly trying to buy into what it has learned.
