After Ukrainian drone strikes disabled Yandex data centers, claims spread that Russian disinformation efforts had diminished — but bot-tracking analysts say troll farm activity is unchanged and the decline claims appear to be disinformation themselves.
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<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Days after Ukrainian military drones took down several Russian data centers, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/12/zelenskyy-vows-retaliate-russia-strikes-ukraine-power-grid">claimed</a> that the campaign had hurt Russia's disinformation efforts. "It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms," Zelenskyy said Monday. "There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations."</p>
<p class="wp-block-paragraph">Zelenskyy isn't the first to assert that the drone operation, which targeted data centers belonging to the Russian technology company Yandex, has cut down on spam and disinformation campaigns fomented by Russian bot farms. Social media users have <a href="https://x.com/ValdemarOsted/status/2109742982568313237">claimed</a> they've noticed less traffic on posts by MAGA-affiliated a …</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/1010424/yandex-drone-strike-outage-disinformation-zelenskyy">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>
# Russian bot farms are still trolling, even after Ukraine’s drone strikes on Yandex
Source: [https://www.theverge.com/news/1010424/yandex-drone-strike-outage-disinformation-zelenskyy](https://www.theverge.com/news/1010424/yandex-drone-strike-outage-disinformation-zelenskyy)
[](https://www.theverge.com/authors/gaby-del-valle)
Gaby Del Valle
is a policy reporter at The Verge covering surveillance, the Department of Homeland Security, and the tech\-right\.
Days after Ukrainian military drones took down several Russian data centers, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy[claimed](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/12/zelenskyy-vows-retaliate-russia-strikes-ukraine-power-grid)that the campaign had hurt Russia’s disinformation efforts\. “It suddenly became a little easier to breathe on many social platforms,” Zelenskyy said Monday\. “There was less hate, less division, and fewer provocations\.”
Zelenskyy isn’t the first to assert that the drone operation, which targeted data centers belonging to the Russian technology company Yandex, has cut down on spam and disinformation campaigns fomented by Russian bot farms\. Social media users have[claimed](https://x.com/ValdemarOsted/status/2109742982568313237)they’ve noticed less traffic on posts by MAGA\-affiliated accounts, as well as those associated with the far\-right Alternative for Germany \(AfD\) party\. Some have even said they’ve noticed a steep drop in spam calls and messages\.
But these people are wrong\. The drone strikes appear to have affected Yandex’s web crawlers, not any disinformation or political operations\.
In fact, the account antibot4navalny, which tracks state\-sponsored troll farms,[reports](https://www.theverge.com/tech/1009443/yandex-russian-bots-cloudflare)that bot traffic is steady as ever\. On Monday, the same day Zelenskyy claimed that disinformation had died down, antibot4navalny reported that several Kremlin\-aligned accounts posted[videos falsely claiming](https://bsky.app/profile/antibot4navalny.bsky.social/post/3mxpjjhqat22e)that experts are demanding the European Union lift the ongoing sanctions on Russia\. Danish analyst Valdemar Osted said interactions on MAGA and AfD accounts[have actually increased](https://x.com/ValdemarOsted/status/2109742982568313237)since the strikes\. And the charts purportedly showing a decline in bot activity[appear to be AI\-generated](https://www.theverge.com/tech/1009594/russian-bots-yandex-outage-drone-strikes-debunk)\.
Ironically, claims that the drone strikes hindered Russian disinformation campaigns appears to be a form of disinformation itself, no matter what Zelenskyy says\.
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- Gaby Del Valle
A Ukrainian drone attack struck Yandex's largest Russian data center in the Kaluga region, taking several modules out of service — the second hit on Yandex facilities within 48 hours following damage to its Sasovo site.
Ukraine has struck three Yandex data centres in a week, forcing the Russian tech giant to suspend operations and disrupting its AI chatbot and smart home services, with the company saying it cannot predict when they will be restored.
Russian forces are escalating jet-powered drone strikes on Ukrainian data centers and telecom networks, exploiting air-defense gaps and disrupting Internet access for tens of thousands, raising concerns for Ukraine's digital economy and critical services.
Ukrainian strikes on Yandex data centers reportedly cut Russian bot activity and coincided with a sharp drop in Elon Musk's X engagement, though experts caution the correlation is unverified. Zelensky later clarified his claims about reduced bot activity were anecdotal.