Ukraine's Wartime AI-in-Education Guidance — A Four-Layer Soft-Law Framework

On 23 May 2024, Ukraine's Ministry of Education and Science, working with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, published recommendations for teachers and students on using artificial intelligence in schools. The guidance covers practical classroom integration, techniques for writing effective prompts ("life hacks for writing queries to artificial intelligence systems"), safety protocols, and curated lists of recommended AI tools. Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said AI "has the potential to revolutionize Ukrainian education by enabling teachers to optimize their work." The guidance was issued as Ukraine continued to operate its education system under wartime conditions, including mass school displacement and disrupted access to in-person instruction.

A 2026 academic analysis (Chumachenko, National Aerospace University Kharkiv Aviation Institute, and Kelestyn, Warwick Business School, published via Wonkhe) characterises Ukraine's approach as a deliberate choice of non-binding "soft law" over formal legislation, built in four layers: national guidance from the two ministries; sector-level codes translating principles into institutional templates; institutional policies governing data handling and procurement; and course-level rules such as syllabus clauses. The analysis notes the guidance applies an EU AI Act-aligned risk classification that flags high-stakes uses — admissions, grading, behavioural monitoring — as high-risk, and sets age thresholds of 13 for independent use with parental consent required between ages 13 and 18. Ukraine has used AI-based tools such as speech-to-text and visual generation specifically to support students with special educational needs and children displaced by the conflict.

The soft-law approach is explicitly a trade-off, not a claim of comprehensiveness: the analysis frames it as pragmatic given wartime capacity constraints, with the authors advising institutions not to "wait for the formal statute" or "outsource pedagogical decisions to tech vendors" — an acknowledgement that formal, binding regulation has not yet followed the initial guidance.

Source: UNN (Ukrainian News agency), 23 May 2024: https://unn.ua/en/news/the-ministry-of-education-has-developed-guidelines-on-artificial-intelligence-for-schools
Corroborating source: Wonkhe, "How Ukraine regulates AI in education during the Russian invasion," 9 March 2026: https://wonkhe.com/blogs/how-ukraine-regulates-ai-in-education-during-the-russian-invasion/

Read the full analysis: https://unn.ua/en/news/the-ministry-of-education-has-developed-guidelines-on-artificial-intelligence-for-schools