Russian Bot Traffic Persists After Drone Strikes on Yandex Data Centers

Ukrainian drone strikes on data centers belonging to Russian technology company Yandex have not slowed the country’s state-sponsored troll farms, according to reporting cited by The Verge. The strikes took place days before President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the campaign had reduced disinformation and made social platforms feel less hostile.

Some social media users also claimed to see less activity from accounts affiliated with MAGA and Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, along with fewer spam calls and messages. But the article says the strikes appear to have affected Yandex’s web crawlers, not disinformation or political operations.

The account antibot4navalny, which tracks state-sponsored troll farms, reported that bot traffic remained steady. On Monday, the day Zelenskyy spoke, it said several Kremlin-aligned accounts shared videos falsely claiming that experts were calling for the European Union to lift its ongoing sanctions on Russia.

Danish analyst Valdemar Osted said interactions on MAGA and AfD accounts had increased since the strikes. The article also says charts purporting to show declining bot activity appear to be AI-generated. It concludes that claims the strikes hindered Russian disinformation may themselves be disinformation.