Ukraine hit Yandex data centers, Russian bots went silent – questions multiply — UNITED24 Media
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on October 12 that Russian bot activity on social media had decreased following Ukrainian drone strikes on Yandex data centers.
Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum in Poland, Zelenskyy highlighted Russia’s vast network of social media bots, which he described as a tool for destabilizing online discussions.
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Zelensky noted that “everyone noticed” a reduction in Russian bot activity after Ukrainian drones struck data centers operated by Yandex, Russia’s largest internet technology company, according to BBC News Ukrainian.
The president’s remarks follow reports of a sharp drop in automated Internet traffic from the Yandex network, although it is unclear from available data whether Russian propaganda operations have been affected.
According to an October 12 analysis carried out by The deep diveCloudflare Radar data showed that automated HTTP requests from Yandex’s AS13238 network dropped sharply after October 8 and approached zero on October 11.
As of 02:00 UTC on October 11, automated queries were just 0.3% of the chart high, down from 88.2% at the same time a week earlier. Cloudflare classified 99.6% of HTTP requests to HTML content originating from the network during the seven-day period as automated.
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Jul 07, 2026 4:29 p.m.
An HTTP request is a message sent by a browser, application, or automated program to a web server to retrieve information or perform an action. Automated queries may come from search engine bots, monitoring systems and other software, not necessarily social media bots.
Cloudflare Radar tracks this traffic using network identifiers called autonomous system numbers (ASNs). Yandex’s AS13238 identifies part of the company’s Internet infrastructure, allowing researchers to measure requests coming from that network.
The reported drop from 88.2% to 0.3% represents a change in traffic from the chart’s peak, not a reduction in the number of social media accounts. Similarly, the 99.6% figure indicates the proportion of requests classified as automated, rather than the share associated with propaganda.
German technology publication t3n also documented the decline, reporting that bot traffic fell to around 0.4% of the previous week’s level before rising back to around 20% on the evening of October 11.
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September 02, 2026 3:54 p.m.
These measurements show a sharp reduction in automated network activity, but do not establish whether Russian propaganda bots have disappeared or whether the damaged infrastructure has stopped generating ordinary automated traffic.
The disruptions follow three reported drone strikes on Yandex facilities in Russia. A data center in Sasovo, Ryazan region, was attacked on the night of October 8, followed by an attack on a facility in Kaluga on October 9.
On October 11, another strike forced the closure of a Yandex data center in the Vladimir region, according to the company. The disruptions affected Yandex services and applications operated by businesses relying on its cloud infrastructure.
The drop in automated traffic has also sparked speculation about possible links between Russian digital infrastructure and online political activity in Europe, notably involving Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
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Czech member of the European Parliament Tomáš Zdechovský drew attention to claims that online activity supporting the AfD had declined after the strikes. The Ukrainian publication The page highlighted his October 11 remarks, questioning whether disruptions to Russian infrastructure had affected the party’s online support.
Ukraine’s campaign against Yandex infrastructure has also exposed the vulnerability of the broader Russian internet segment.
On the afternoon of October 8, hours after a fire broke out at the Sasovo premises, banks, retailers, mobile operators, transportation services and major news sites suffered outages, with the most severe disruptions occurring in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The Sasovo site would have hosted two of Yandex’s three supercomputers. It shares an industrial site with the Sasta machine tool factory, which was also struck overnight and is believed to be linked to supply chains supporting Russian production of Iskander ballistic missiles.
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