







Call it disinformation about disinformation.
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]

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.

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

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.

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

Did Ukrainian strikes on Russian datacentres reduce online disinformation?
While some viral online graphs suggest less bot activity, Zelenskyy’s claims of improved social media discourse do not entirely pass muster

The Yandex outage probably didn’t blitz Russian bots
Not the bots you’re probably picturing, that is.

Drone Strikes Didn’t Take Out a Russian Bot Farm, But We Were Primed to Believe It
A viral rumor illustrates people’s hunger to make sense of the division we see online.

Zelenskyy Says Yandex Strikes Crippled Pro-Kremlin Bots But Tech Experts Question Evidence
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine's recent attacks on Russian tech giant Yandex’s data centers have resulted in fewer Internet bots promoting pro-Kremlin hate, a claim that has been disputed by many technology researchers.

To those implying that Kremlin-controlled social media bot/troll farms became silent after Ukraine hit a Yandex data center, posting this CloudFare chart ( radar.cloudflare.com/bots/as13238 ): Hate to disappoint you all ⤵️
By popular demand: A follow-up thread on Russian bots, Yandex, Cloudflare, MAGA, AfD and "breathing easier" on social media. 1️⃣ We see no "dramatic drop" in traffic of Kremlin-aligned human trolls-for-hire targeting Russian domestic users (which we have been tracking for years).
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault

Traffic from AS13238 | Cloudflare Radar
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault
Archived Fact-Checked Media — MediaVault