Ukrainian forces conducted at least three airstrikes targeting datacentres operated by the Russian technology company Yandex over a recent weekend, an action that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggested had disrupted Russia’s extensive disinformation efforts. Speaking on Monday, Zelenskyy said the strikes appeared to have eased the climate on many social media platforms, with less hate speech, divisiveness, and provocations. However, experts caution that the impact on Russian disinformation may be overstated.

While some viral graphics circulating on social media claimed a sharp decline in activity from Yandex-associated bots following the strikes, these figures do not directly reflect Russian disinformation campaigns, according to industry specialists. Amil Khan, CEO of Valent, a technology startup focused on monitoring disinformation networks, reported no significant change in posting patterns on Russian social media platforms in the aftermath of the strikes. Valent tracks approximately 40 such networks worldwide and noted that the volume of disinformation-related posts remained stable. Khan stressed that Yandex datacentres do not have a direct operational link to the social media bot farms commonly used for disinformation dissemination.

The strikes did, however, produce measurable effects on web traffic. Data from Cloudflare, a company monitoring global internet activity, showed a noticeable drop in bot-associated traffic from the Yandex network on October 8 and October 11, coinciding with two of the attacks. Independent Russian outlet Meduza reported that multiple Russian websites experienced outages, including services offered by major banks, retailers, sports applications, and Yandex’s own platforms such as Yandex Go and Yandex Eats. The disruptions are expected to require an extended period for repair.

Experts explain that the term “bot” encompasses various automated software functions, and declines detected by Cloudflare predominantly reflect reductions in activity from Yandex’s web crawlers—automated programs that index websites to improve search engine functionality—rather than “troll” bots used in social media manipulation. Michał “Rysiek” Woźniak, an internet infrastructure expert, highlighted that a drop in this type of bot traffic should not be interpreted as a decline in propaganda or coordinated influence activities. He noted that while state-sponsored disinformation networks could be indirectly affected by damage to datacentres, these networks are typically distributed and resilient.

Ned Mendez, head of research at Alliance4Europe, emphasized that sophisticated disinformation operations often employ distributed methods such as residential internet connections and phone farms to evade detection and shutdown of centralized infrastructure. He noted that online platforms frequently flag traffic from datacentres as automated, leading serious actors to avoid reliance on such sources.

Consequently, disrupting Russian disinformation through military strikes on datacentres is unlikely to be a comprehensive solution. Mendez remarked, “We can’t simply bomb the bots out of existence.” Instead, experts suggest that countering disinformation may require targeting specific organizations, such as the Internet Research Agency or troll farms linked to entities like Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group, as well as pressing major social media companies to enhance moderation efforts. Amil Khan noted his team’s cooperation with platforms like Meta to reduce inflammatory content in other conflict zones, though he acknowledged political obstacles may limit such approaches, making kinetic actions against infrastructure appear more straightforward.