A meeting of the IT Coalition Steering Group led by Estonia and Luxembourg took place in Tallinn this week. Participants of the initiative and observers reported on results of the first supplies of equipment to Ukraine from the IT Coalition and announced new contributions.

During the meeting, Spain announced its intention to join the IT coalition in the near future. In addition, member countries of the initiative confirmed new contributions of 22 million euros from Luxembourg, Iceland, Estonia and Belgium.

"The work of the IT Coalition is progressing rapidly, and step by step we are moving towards meeting the needs of Ukraine. At the beginning of May, the first laptops, monitors and other communication devices arrived in Ukraine. Estonia makes an additional contribution of 2 million euros.  This will be mostly used for the development of the Oberig system, which enables the registration of those who are eligible to the Ukrainian military service. Together with our partners, we have already managed to cover the most urgent needs, but there are still many priority positions," said Undersecretary for Defence Policy of Estonia Tuuli Duneton.

Before the coalition meeting, a technical session was held, at which developers from the Innovation Center of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine presented the DELTA situational awareness system to partners. The Ukrainian military presented the participants with tools for planning operations, technologies for integrating air, sea and land drones, secure chat and streaming services with built-in information processing functions by artificial intelligence.

"We are grateful to our partners for their continued support, new contributions, and quick response to our military's critical needs. The initiative of the IT Coalition is two-way: we share our own developments and experience with our partners. Our cooperation brings the use of information technologies in combat operations to a new level," said Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine Kateryna Chernohorenko.

 Reference: The IT Coalition is a dedicated group of states within the Ukraine Defence Contact Group ("Ramstein format"), which is focused on providing support to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the field of IT, communications and cyber security. Currently, the coalition includes 12 countries: Estonia and Luxembourg as the Lead Nations, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Ukraine. The initiative has already raised  over 58 million euros in financial and in-kind contributions.