The hackathon was organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and startup lab Zborka Labs, with support from the Ministry of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus and the Belarusian State Academy of Communications.
The mission of the hackathon was to engage talented professionals and student teams ready to tackle real-world business and societal challenges using artificial intelligence (AI).
Participants worked on two practical cases:
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Beltelecom’s case: AI assistant for managing a database of local legal acts (LLAs). Teams were tasked with developing a tool capable of uploading regulatory documents, training a model, answering questions based on the document base, and transforming the retrieved information into output documents such as technical specifications and tender proposals.
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Wildberries & Russ case: Marketplace review moderation. The challenge was to create an algorithm capable of automatically detecting offensive or inappropriate reviews within real user-generated data, thereby improving feedback quality and strengthening trust in the platform.
The core coding phase lasted 36 hours. The event kicked off on 26 September with an opening ceremony and case draw. Teams worked intensively on their projects from 27–28 September, followed by solution presentations. The jury announced the results on 30 September.
Winning teams:
- Belarusian State University (BSU) – Alexander Sytin, Ivan Gorokhov, Andrey Buinevich, Anastasia Gavrish, and Anton Borisov (Wildberries & Russ case);
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Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – Kirill Kokhnyuk, Daniil Zaloga, Konstantin Garkavy, Artem Borodin, and Kirill Timoshchenko (Beltelecom case).
Alexander Sytin, team captain from BSU, shared that his team had prior hackathon experience—but in different formats. He noted that the most engaging part of the Wildberries & Russ case was analyzing real marketplace reviews, which formed the dataset provided by the case owner.
“It was challenging to achieve high solution quality, but overall, it was quite interesting and not overly difficult,” he said. Kirill Kokhnyuk, captain of the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs team, emphasized that the Beltelecom case involved multiple complex tasks requiring unconventional approaches.
“One key dilemma was whether to use a local AI model or an API from an existing large language model (LLM). We opted for the API to accelerate development and focused on designing our RAG pipeline,” he explained. Both teams highlighted the critical role of mentors.
“Our mentor was Dmitry Utlik, CEO of Utlik.Co,” Kokhnyuk recalled.
“He guided us on the right direction. It was incredibly valuable to speak with an active CEO. Organizers were always available to help resolve any issues we encountered.”
Hackathon partners—beCloud, EPOL SOFT, and Nero Electronics—also recognized the strong performance of other teams.
For instance, EPOL SOFT’s experts named Team № 5 from the Belarusian-Russian University (BRU) as their favorite. Team captain Saveliy Kurashov noted that lectures delivered during the event by Zborka Labs and ITU helped refresh and systematize their knowledge.
According to Kurashov, mentors were instrumental to their success:
“We were mentored by Aidyn Abirov from Wildberries and Denis Savitsky from Zborka Labs—and it was a perfect match,” he said.
“Aidyn clarified the case objectives and the expected final outcome. Since he works in computer vision, I even got advice on my own startup. Denis helped us craft a compelling pitch. Thanks to their support, we never lacked knowledge or information.”
Sergey Buinitsky, Deputy General Director for Digital Development and IT at Beltelecom, emphasized that as a market leader, Beltelecom is always open to initiatives supporting talented youth and driving innovation.
“Today, AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s a practical tool transforming many familiar domains. We presented participants with two real-world challenges relevant to our operations. We were highly impressed by the presentations and saw numerous promising projects that could potentially be integrated into our work,” he added.
The hackathon jury included experts from ITU, Wildberries & Russ, Beltelecom, EPOL SOFT, Nero Electronics, and Utlik.Co.
The next edition of TheHackathon will take place in Gomel, hosted by Gomel State University, in October 2025.