KHARKIV, Ukraine, May 6th, 2026, FinanceWire
In a ten-story building shaped like an open book, 30 kilometers from the Russian border, Yaroslav the Wise National Law University is racing to digitize 26,000 rare legal volumes and establish Y-Park, a LegalTech and AI innovation hub. The project was initiated by the university in partnership with entrepreneur Sergei Petryk.
Kharkiv endures air raid alerts lasting up to 20 hours a day. The university’s library holds irreplaceable legal works dating back to the 16th century; Polish Kingdom legislation, Roman law treatises from 1826, and publications from the Juridical Society at Kharkiv Imperial University. Ten thousand volumes have been digitized over the past two decades. Sixteen thousand remain at risk.
Why This Moment Matters
Once digitized, the library’s collection becomes a unique dataset for training legal AI models, something no startup can replicate quickly. The global LegalTech market is valued at $27.6 billion and projected to reach $35.6 billion by 2027. Ukraine currently has no dedicated LegalTech hub. Y-Park aims to be the first in continental Europe.
But this is more than a market opportunity. The project encompasses concrete infrastructure:
- CODEX MUDRYI: A digital library platform making rare legal texts accessible to researchers and AI developers globally
- Civic Initiative Platform: Modeled on Latvia’s ManaBalss.lv, enabling public participation in legal and policy discussions
- Legal Navigator: Designed to help over one million Ukrainian veterans navigate 156 separate legislative acts across 18 government agencies
This is not just about preserving books. It’s about building systems. Kharkiv is one of Ukraine’s strongest intellectual centers, especially in law. If the country is to rebuild properly, it needs knowledge infrastructure—not just physical infrastructure. Y-Park represents that commitment.
The Infrastructure Play
Sergei Petryk has spent 20 years organizing international conferences and building cross-border projects. He has organized over 70 international conferences with audiences of up to 35,000 and produced a blockchain livestream that drew 121,348 concurrent viewers, a Guinness World Records-verified record published on the organization’s official website. His role in Y-Park centers on marketing strategy, international network activation, and donor coordination.
“For 20 years, I’ve been working in chaos, different countries, markets, industries,” Petryk said. “War is obviously a different scale, but the core skill is the same: coordination. I know how to build international attention, attract partners, and create momentum—and that’s exactly what a project like Y-Park needs right now.”
What’s Being Announced:
- Memorandum of cooperation signed between Yaroslav the Wise University and Sergei Petryk (April 2026)
- Acceleration of the digitization process: 16,000 remaining volumes to be scanned and processed
- Y-Park development initiated as continental Europe’s first dedicated LegalTech hub
- International donor outreach campaign underway
- Academic collaboration targeted with Harvard Law School’s Berkman Klein Center, Stanford CODEX, Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, and the University of Helsinki’s Legal Tech Lab
Rector Anatoliy Hetman was re-elected in January 2026 with 523 out of 544 votes, a clear mandate for digital transformation. Vice-Rector for Research Dmytro Luchenko is overseeing the park’s development. Yaroslav the Wise, founded in 1804, is Ukraine’s oldest and most prestigious law school. Ten of eighteen justices on Ukraine’s Constitutional Court are alumni.
Whether the university’s LegalTech hub can be built 30 kilometers from the front line remains to be seen. But as Petryk puts it: “If we don’t digitize this now, we won’t lose books. We’ll lose a competitive advantage that took 220 years to build.”
In the building shaped like an open book, they seem to understand this better than anyone.
About Y-Park
Y-Park is a LegalTech and AI innovation hub established by Yaroslav the Wise National Law University to digitize rare legal archives and build infrastructure for legal technology development in Ukraine. The initiative combines historical legal knowledge with cutting-edge AI infrastructure, positioning Ukraine as a leader in legal technology innovation.
Broader Context
The partnership reflects a broader trend among Ukrainian diaspora entrepreneurs investing in institutional infrastructure. Notable examples include Ukrainian-founded global companies such as GitLab and Revolut, as well as emerging platforms like DeHealth, which, under co-founder Anna Bon, has built an AI-powered medical data infrastructure operating in over 80 countries. The civic-economic movement Energy Nation describes this as the emergence of a distributed economy, where diaspora networks function as a global support system for Ukraine’s reconstruction and development.
Official Source: Yaroslav the Wise National Law University — Memorandum Announcement
Website: https://y-park.org/