The Russian Bots Went Silent. Or Did They?

Did Ukrainian strikes on Yandex silence Russian bots? The evidence doesn’t show it, and shrinking data access makes it harder to check.

Yandex bot traffic drop isn’t a Russian bot farm collapse

0.4% Yandex bot traffic drop reflects stalled web crawling, not proof that Russian troll farms went offline. Read what the data shows

Fact-checking an engagement drop on MAGA pages because of the Yandex data center strike | Joohn Choe

Zelenskyy tweet: https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/2109602415397749044?s=20 Res Futura Data House tweet: https://x.com/Polityka_wSieci/status

Did “Russian bot traffic” really disappear after Ukrainian strikes on Yandex servers?

Despite multiple Ukrainian strikes hitting Yandex servers in Russia, a thread by antibot4navalny, which has long tracked state-sponsored social media campaigns and troll farms, explains that the Cloudflare “Bot Traffic” chart many people have cited is really about automated web crawlers operated by Yandex accessing the web. It’s not connected to “bots” posting on social media, and Russian bot/crawler traffic overall continues to be about the same as normal. Still, are you noticing any difference in the posts and comments you’ve seen online? [Media: https://bsky.app/profile/antibot4navalny.bsky.social/post/3mxmv7t6nxc27]

Ukraine hits Yandex data centers; Zelensky claims fewer bots, hate speech online, but no evidence of a link - i24NEWS

Users pointed to a drop in posts containing phrases like “Free Palestine” and “Genocide” on X after the strikes, but researchers said some of the graphs covered an unfinished day

Yandex Bot Traffic Fell 99 Percent Overnight. Here's How to Measure and Block the AI Crawlers Hitting Your Own Server

Last weekend two of Yandex's five data centres were hit by Ukrainian drone strikes, according to...

Yandex outage: data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots went on the move

When strikes hit Yandex data centers, many assumed Russian bot operations went dark. Cloudflare data reveals that while search crawling stopped, malicious bots simply migrated to other networks.

Yandex Strikes, Russian Bots and Influence Operations | Graphika | Graphika

Did strikes on Yandex data centers silence Russian bots? Graphika analyzes viral claims involving AfD, MAGA and Reform UK and finds no notable decline.

Yandex: Ukraine strikes data centre in third attack on Russian tech giant

It is the third time this week that Ukraine has targeted Russian tech giant Yandex, forcing the company to suspend its operations.

Yandex: Ukraine strikes data centre in third attack on Russian tech giant

It is the third time this week that Ukraine has targeted Russian tech giant Yandex, forcing the company to suspend its operations.

Ukraine knocked out key Yandex data centers. The fallout is being felt across Russia. — Meduza

Ukraine has struck three of the six data centers belonging to Yandex, a Russian technology company, in Sasovo (Ryazan region), Kaluga, and Vladimir. Kyiv called the strikes a response to Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers, which Russian forces have been striking lately. The infrastructure of the company’s “iron heart,” as Yandex calls its data centers, has been damaged. Operations at two of them — in Sasovo and Vladimir — have been halted. At the data center in Kaluga, “several modules have been completely knocked out.” Outages have plagued the Russian internet since the strikes began: not only Yandex’s services but also the websites of other companies and even media outlets have been operating with restrictions. Users abroad have also complained about problems with Yandex’s apps. As of October 12, the company had not managed to restore their operation. Here’s a look at the consequences of the Ukrainian strikes that Yandex and its users have faced.