The Russian Bots Went Silent. Or Did They?

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]

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.

Russia's Yandex bot traffic nearly eliminated overnight after Ukraine drone strikes cripple multiple of 'Russia's Google' data centers — Ukraine intensifies bombing of Yandex data centers in response to Moscow’s strikes on Kyiv data centers

The world is getting a break from Russian bots thanks to Kyiv.

Yandex crawler traffic drops 94% after drone strikes on 3 data centers

YandexBot requests on Cloudflare Radar fell to near zero on October 11 as a Vladimir site shut. Did bots on X and Reddit vanish too? Available data cannot say.

Is Zelensky right to say data centre strikes have taken down Russian bots?

Experts say there is no evidence that Russian trolls have been affected by Ukraine’s Yandex attacks.

Rapid-response fact-check: "Yandex Strikes Caused Russian Bot Activity To Drop By 50 Percent" Is False | Joohn Choe

This is going on viral on Facebook today and it's unfortunately wrong. Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers in Russia did not cut

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

After strikes on Yandex data centers, social media users began talking about the disappearance of AfD and MAGA bots. | Межа

Three Yandex data centers stopped operating after strikes, and the company’s network traffic plunged. The data do not confirm claims that political bot activity also fell.

Ukrainian drones hit three of Russian tech giant Yandex’s data centers in four days. Ukraine’s president says the bots thinned out too

Lithuania’s prime minister wants more such strikes to protect elections. Researchers say the bot data shows Yandex’s web crawlers, not trolls.

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 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.

Drones Hit Yandex so Cloudflare Kept the Russians Online

A Czech MEP posted a chart of AfD online activity with data points dated after he posted it, and it showed 232,000 views inside two hours. By Sunday night Frank Luntz, Garry Kasparov and Timothy Snyder were spreading the news: drones hit Yandex, and Russia’s bot armies went silent. The strikes are real, and the following bot silence reports beg a deeper analysis of what is being measured and how.

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...