Ukraine Built Its Own Post-Quantum Signature Algorithm. It Isn't ML-DSA.

Most countries on this tracker are migrating to the same three NIST standards -- ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA. Ukraine is one of the few building its own.

A real national algorithm, not an adoption

DSTU 9212:2023, "Information technologies. Cryptographic protection of information. Electronic signature algorithm on algebraic lattices with errors," is a lattice-based digital-signature standard developed by Ukraine's own standards process -- not a national adoption of NIST's ML-DSA, but an independently constructed algorithm in the same mathematical family (lattice-based signatures are one of NIST's own selected post-quantum primitive classes, so this is a genuine post-quantum cryptographic standard by construction, built on Ukrainian terms).

SSSCIP (the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine) planned to bring it into binding use. A signed internal document, "Changes to the Plan of Activity for Preparing Regulatory Act Drafts for 2024," commits the agency to amend its own Order No. 687 -- the list of cryptographic algorithms and protocols approved for licensed information-protection providers -- specifically to add DSTU 9212:2023:

"...доповнення його новим національним стандартом ДСТУ 9212:2023 «Інформаційні технології. Криптографічний захист інформації. Алгоритм електронного підпису на алгебраїчних решітках із відхилами»" ("...supplementing it with the new national standard DSTU 9212:2023 'Information technologies. Cryptographic protection of information. Electronic signature algorithm on algebraic lattices with errors.'")

The plan item was signed by SSSCIP head Yurii Myronenko and set Q2 as the target quarter for drafting the amendment. That's a real, dated, attributable commitment from Ukraine's cryptography regulator -- though as of the available document, it's a scheduled draft amendment, not confirmation that Order No. 687 has actually been updated yet.

An earlier standard, confirmed differently

Ukraine appears to have an even older post-quantum standard: DSTU 8961:2019, nicknamed "Skelya" (Скеля, "Cliff/Rock"), described consistently across multiple independent Ukrainian academic papers -- from Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, and NTUU KPI -- as an NTRU-Prime-derived asymmetric encryption and key-encapsulation algorithm on algebraic lattices, adopted 21 December 2019 and effective 1 January 2021.

We couldn't verify this one the way we verified DSTU 9212:2023 -- there's no primary SSSCIP work-plan document or UkrNDNC catalog entry we could directly fetch and read (UkrNDNC's standards catalog search is JavaScript-rendered and returns nothing to a direct fetch attempt). What we have instead is convergent academic citation: multiple independent Ukrainian research groups, publishing separately, describing the same standard number with consistent technical characterization. That's real evidentiary weight -- it's the kind of agreement a fabricated or mistaken standard number is unlikely to produce by coincidence -- but it's a different category of confirmation than reading the regulatory text directly, and we're citing it with that distinction stated plainly rather than treating the two standards as equally verified.

Why this matters beyond Ukraine

Most national PQC stories on this tracker are about timing -- when a country adopts NIST's algorithms, and under what legal force. Ukraine's story is partly about algorithm sovereignty instead: developing and standardizing its own post-quantum cryptographic primitives rather than exclusively importing NIST's. That's a meaningfully different strategic posture, closely related to what Vietnam's Decision 125 states as an explicit objective (a domestic cryptographic product ecosystem) -- except Ukraine appears to have already produced a working national algorithm, not just a stated intention to build one.

Whether DSTU 9212:2023 ends up interoperating with, competing against, or running parallel to NIST's ML-DSA in Ukrainian infrastructure is an open question the available documents don't resolve. What's confirmed is that Ukraine isn't simply waiting for an international standard to adopt -- it has its own, developed independently, with a real regulatory process actively working to make it binding.

What to do with this

If you operate cryptographic systems in Ukraine, or supply software into Ukrainian infrastructure, DSTU 9212:2023 is worth tracking as a potential national requirement distinct from the ML-KEM/ML-DSA migration most other jurisdictions are driving toward -- the amendment bringing it into Order No. 687's binding list was targeted for Q2 of the plan's cycle, and may have since progressed. Neither Ukrainian standard comes with a cryptographic-inventory or CBOM requirement attached, and the National Bank of Ukraine has issued nothing PQC-specific of its own -- the regulatory activity here is concentrated entirely in SSSCIP's standards work.

The Ukraine country page tracks both standards with their sources, distinguishing what's independently confirmed from what rests on convergent secondary evidence.