OpenAI gives Ukraine free access to AI cyber defense tools

OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it will provide the Ukrainian government with free access to its AI-powered cyber defense program, Daybreak, to help protect civilian infrastructure from persistent Russian cyberattacks. The initiative, unveiled on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, includes access to the company's GPT-5.6 Sol model.openai+1

A Digital Front Line

Working with Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, OpenAI will equip Ukrainian cyber teams with tools to identify software vulnerabilities, investigate suspicious activity, and develop and test fixes more quickly. The announcement was made jointly by Dmytro Kushneruk, Ukraine's Consul General in San Francisco, and Sasha Baker, OpenAI's Head of National Security Policy.openai

"Ukraine is already on the front line, and its defenders need support now," Baker said. "We want to put more capable tools in their hands to help them find and fix vulnerabilities and protect the critical networks people depend on."openai

Ukraine's national cyber incident response team, CERT-UA, handled nearly 6,000 cyber incidents in 2025, a 37% year-over-year increase, according to the Seeking Alpha report on TradingView. Those attacks targeted hospital systems, the energy sector, and telecommunications networks — infrastructure that millions of Ukrainians depend on daily.bbc+2

European Track Record

Ukraine is not the first country to receive OpenAI's cyber defense tools. The company has already provided access to defenders in France, Germany, Poland, and other European nations. The EU's cyber agency, ENISA, used OpenAI's models to identify vulnerabilities in software across EU institutions, all of which have since been patched. In Poland, national cyber agency CERT Polska used the models to discover six flaws in third-party router software, and the vendor has released fixes.thenextweb+1

Broader Tensions Over AI in Conflict

The announcement arrives amid growing evidence that AI is being weaponized in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Anthropic reported earlier this month that its Claude platform appeared to have been used by Russian developers to build software for kamikaze drones, with the group using VPNs to circumvent geographic restrictions.yahoo+1

Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence at Sophos, told the BBC that Russian offensive cyber operations have been "a key component" of the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine since 2014, calling any initiative strengthening Ukraine's defenses "a welcome development." Jamie MacColl of the Royal United Services Institute noted that Western tech firms support Ukraine partly for altruistic reasons but also because they "gain very valuable data and intelligence from an active conflict."bbc+1

George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries, framed the effort as inseparable from the broader war: "Protecting civilian infrastructure means defending it against both physical and digital attacks, so people can continue to live, work and access essential services."openai