Ukraine Strikes Russian Data Centre: Are Kremlin Propaganda Bots Down?
Ukrainian drone strikes on the data centre of Russian internet company Yandex have fuelled speculation that the Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation operations on social media have also been disrupted. However, experts say there is not enough evidence to establish a direct link between the attacks and a fall in bot activity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes had made activity on several social-media platforms feel easier. Some users also said they had noticed fewer posts supporting US President Donald Trump, Russia and Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
Yandex confirmed that its data centre in Vladimir, about 170 kilometres east of Moscow, was damaged in a drone attack on Sunday (11 October). Operations were temporarily suspended before services gradually resumed. The disruption also affected payment and taxi-booking services in several regions of Russia and abroad.
The attack followed strikes on Yandex facilities in Sasovo on Thursday (8 October) and Kaluga on Friday (9 October). According to Cloudflare Radar, internet traffic from Yandex fell by about 35 per cent after the strike on Sasovo, then plunged by as much as 99 per cent after the Vladimir data centre was shut down, compared with the previous week.
Claims of fewer propaganda bots
Some social-media users linked the disruption to reduced activity by automated accounts, or bots, that spread propaganda and disinformation.
Garry Kasparov, a former Russian chess grandmaster now living in exile, said the activity of Russian bots on his social-media feeds had fallen sharply.
Zelenskyy also referred to the impact of the attacks at the Warsaw Security Forum on Monday (12 October). He said that since Ukraine began targeting Russian data centres, activity on some social-media platforms had felt easier.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius even suggested further attacks on Russian data centres to help protect upcoming elections in Lithuania and Poland.
“We should ask President Zelenskyy to strike more data centres in Russia. I think that could help,” he said at the forum.
However, disinformation experts have questioned the conclusion that the strikes on Yandex silenced the Kremlin’s propaganda networks.
Nikola Tulechki, an expert in monitoring disinformation operations at the organisation Data for Good, said there was no evidence to support the claim. He said the widely shared Cloudflare chart showed only a decline in automated requests from Yandex’s network to websites, not a fall in social-media bot activity.
The Antibot4Navalny group, which monitors Russia-related influence operations, also said the Cloudflare data had been misinterpreted.