Zelenskyy Says Yandex Strikes Crippled Pro-Kremlin Bots But Tech Experts Question Evidence
Cloudflare Radar data showed automated traffic from Yandex fell sharply after the strikes, but analysts said it does not prove Russian propaganda bots went offline.
- Over the past week, Ukrainian drones struck three data centers belonging to Yandex, the tech giant often called "Russia's Google," with the final attack on Oct. 11 damaging a facility in the Vladimir region east of Moscow.
- Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "everyone noticed" a drop in Russian bot activity on social media following the drone strikes.
- An Oct. 12 analysis by The Deep Dive of Cloudflare Radar data shows automated web traffic from Yandex fell sharply after Oct. 8, measuring just 0.3 percent of its peak at one point.
- Users in Western countries reported seeing less right-wing political activity on social media, with European Parliament Tom Zdechovsk noting claims that online support for Germany's Alternative for Germany party declined.
- Mashable reports that "automated traffic" and "Russian propaganda bots" are not identical, cautioning that current data tracks network requests rather than confirming specific social media influence operations tied to Yandex.
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Ukrainian attacks on Russian Yandex data centers have disrupted services for Russian users. Some commentators and politicians on social media have said they have noticed that the attacks may have also affected so-called bot farms, with fake user accounts and activity reportedly dropping significantly. However, Lithuanian experts say the data does not indicate that the Ukrainian attacks have disrupted bot networks in Lithuania.
Ukraine has already attacked three data centers of Yandex, the company that serves like Russian Google. Internet has suffered disruptions in Russia and Zelensky says that "breaths better" on social networks: there are fewer "bots".
In Russia, recent Ukrainian strikes on several data centres have caused Yandex to waver. Russia's digital giant reported on Sunday, October 11, that its cloud infrastructure was broken after another drone attack on one of its data centres. As a domino effect, some observers are wrongly claiming that the Kremlin's disinformation bots' activity has fallen drastically.
Cybersecurity expert Mikko Hyppönen says that Russian bot farms and troll factories do not need Russian data centers to operate.
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