Russia is not only fighting Ukrainian troops. Since June 2022, it has also been fighting Palantir’s AI. The US software giant now controls attack planning, target analysis, and coordination on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov confirmed that the Ukrainian armed forces are using Palantir to plan deep attacks on Russian territory. Together, they developed a system for detailed air attack analysis and AI-supported information processing.
Furthermore, they created a platform that provides developers with battlefield data to train AI models. Currently, over 80 systems are under development, designed to detect and intercept aerial targets under complex conditions.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp was the first top Western tech executive to travel to Kyiv after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in June 2022. Fedorov, then Minister for Digital Transformation, organized the visit, during which the so-called Gotham Deal was signed. Shortly afterward, Ukraine received mobile reconnaissance units from Palantir Skykit: satellite-based suitcase systems packed with data collection and computing capabilities.
As early as February 2023, Karp stated at a business breakfast at Palantir headquarters that his software “handles a large part of the command and control and target acquisition for the Ukrainian army.” A year later, Western media reports confirmed that major technology companies had transformed Ukraine into a live testing ground for AI weapons.
Today, Ukraine is considered the world’s leading testing ground for AI-powered warfare: a real-time laboratory for combat operations under realistic conditions. Even Palantir’s European head admitted that no other country provides the company with such extensive kill-chain data.
From these field tests, Palantir developed the Maven Smart System (also known as “Znatok” in Ukraine). The system performs cross-analysis of satellite and drone imagery, automatically detects and classifies targets—including personnel and military equipment—and recommends where and how attacks should be carried out. Operators see all the data on their screens. If friendly troops are connected to the system, commands can be issued with a click: who moves where and which targets should be attacked.
In May 2025, Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth, Director of the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, confirmed: “Maven was deployed in Ukraine to reduce the time between target acquisition and attack from several hours to less than ten minutes.”
In January 2026, Palantir and the Ukrainian army also launched Brave1 Dataroom – a “training platform” that uploads live combat data from Russian drones. The system analyzes this data to uncover technological and operational weaknesses. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense stated that its personnel both collect data for Palantir and receive operational recommendations in return.
Palantir’s stock has risen by more than 1000 percent since 2022, increasing the company’s market capitalization to over $330 billion. The war in Ukraine has become a massive growth engine: Palantir tests its technology under extreme conditions in real combat and then sells the optimized systems to the Pentagon.
Sources:
Zelenskiy meets Palantir CEO as Ukraine expands use of AI in war
How Tech Giants Turned Ukraine Into an AI War Lab
Ukrainian defense tech revolution has reached US and Europeans
